What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the _succession_ of these several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here called the positive method of thought is not equally _spontaneous_ to the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified, or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have been a portion of his experience entertained merely _as experience_. The very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology? Or does M. Comte mean this only--which we presume to be the case--that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity? If so, what necessity for this _metaphysic_ apparatus for the sole purpose of _transition_? If each of these great modes, the positive and theological, has its independent source, and is equally spontaneous--if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though in different stages of development, the function attributed to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it; there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of _a law of succession_ in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of invariable sequence, between the phenomena?