Thus Comte came back to Aristotle’s closed world with the earth as its centre. He points it out himself in showing in what way he differs from the ancient conception. “This unity,” he says, “existed for the ancients, but was of an absolute character which at that time was legitimate.” When the motion of our planet became known, the ancient constitution of celestial science might merely have been modified “by preserving in it, as subjective, the centre which was at first supposed to be objective.” That would have sufficed to change astronomy from an absolute science to a relative one. Undoubtedly the ancients were deceived in believing the earth to be the centre of the world; but, in order to correct their error, it sufficed to say, the centre of _our_ world. The subjective synthesis “indeed concentrates the celestial studies round the earth.” The other stars only deserve our attention in so far as the knowledge of our planet requires it. Comte ends by saying in the fourth volume of the _Politique positive_ that, strictly speaking, the study of the sun and moon would suffice. We may add to them the ancient planets, but not the “little telescopic planets.”[130] This progressive narrowing of the astronomical domain does not indicate a radical change in Comte’s philosophical thought. It only results from the growing subordination of the scientific interest to other superior interests. To know for the sake of knowing, appears to Comte to be a wrong use of the human intellect. The Newtons and the Laplaces in the past have fulfilled a necessary function, and humanity owes them eternal gratitude. They struck a decisive blow against theological and metaphysical philosophy; and secured the victory for the positive spirit. In their time scientific speculation which tended to the discovery of the laws of phenomena, and especially of celestial phenomena, was at once the most sublime and the most useful occupation which those men of genius could set themselves. But now that their efforts have culminated in the foundation of positive philosophy, and this philosophy itself in the “final religion,” there is no longer any reason to continue researches with which henceforth humanity can dispense. We must even “cut down many idle acquisitions.”[131] In a word, from the religious point of view, Comte, in order to remedy the anarchy of science, suppresses its liberty.