After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school, he turns to the _metaphysic_, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes _doctrine critique_, for M. Comte is rich in names. "In submitting, in their turn, the _metaphysic_ doctrine to a like appreciation, it must never be overlooked that, though exclusively critical, and therefore purely revolutionary, it has not the less merited, for a long time, the title of progressive, as having in fact presided over the principal political improvements accomplished in the course of the three last centuries, and which have necessarily been of a _negative_ description. If, when conceived in an absolute sense, its dogmas manifest, in fact, a character directly anarchical, when viewed in an historical position, and in their antagonism to the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state, necessary to the introduction of a new political organization. "By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social system to another can never be direct and continuous; it supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we see the legitimate source of the present _doctrine critique_--a source which at once explains the indispensable services it has hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies.... "Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of political notions, the most fundamental, it represents government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of society, against which it sedulously places itself in a constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity, in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to leave it no other than the simple functions of general police, without any essential participation in the supreme direction of the action of the collective body or of its social development.