The spirit of the sociological method will then be always to consider simultaneously the various social aspects, whether in statics, or in dynamics. Undoubtedly each of them can be the object of a special study, by the way of “preliminary elaboration.” But, as soon as the science is sufficiently advanced, the correlation of phenomena will serve as a guide for their analysis. Political economy has proved by facts that the isolated study of a series of social phenomena is condemned to remain irrational and barren. Those then who, in the system of social studies, wish to imitate “the methodical parcelling out, which belongs to the inorganic sciences,” misunderstand what the essential conditions of their subject require. Here the most general laws must be known first. It is from them that science must then descend to the more particular laws. The more complex the phenomena, the more numerous are the processes of method at our disposal for studying them. This law of compensation is verified again in the present case. Sociology, over and above the processes made use of by the preceding sciences possesses some which are peculiarly its own. To put it more plainly, in its capacity of final science, the whole positive method belongs to it. As method is only learnt by practice, the sociologist will therefore have to be formed by a complete scientific education from mathematics, which will give him the feeling of positivity, to biology which will teach him the comparative method. The _Cours de philosophie positive_ precisely retraces this methodical ascent, which leads the human mind, by successive degrees, up to social science. And, since the intellectual evolution of the individual reproduces that of the species, the sociologist will cover the same ground to reach the same end. At any rate, if a mathematical education is indispensable so as to accustom him to the positive mode of thought, he will, however, acknowledge that social phenomena do not allow of the use of numbers or of mathematical analysis, nor more especially of the calculation of probabilities. Comte treats Laplace’s attempt upon this point as absurd, an attempt which has been taken up again by other mathematicians. He likes to quote it as a proof of the lack of the philosophical spirit among geometers. Indeed, according to him, to apply the calculation of probabilities to historical events, implies a failure to understand that these phenomena are subject to invariable laws like all other phenomena.