Being founded upon positive science, Comte’s ethics will reproduce its essential characteristics. In the first place it will be “real,” that is to say it will rest upon observation and not upon imagination. It will consider man as he is and not as he fancies himself to be. It will then rest, not upon the abstract analysis which he may make of his own heart, but upon the proofs given by humanity of its inclinations and of the usual motives for its actions, during the centuries made known to us by history. In a word, through the use of an objective and truly scientific method, it will avoid serious causes for mistakes. Being positive, this morality will be relative. For the immediate and necessary consequence of the relativity of knowledge is the relativity of morality. Kant, whom Comte himself called “the last of his great precursors,” attempted to preserve an absolute character for ethics: it is because, at bottom, he also preserved metaphysics. The moral law, says Kant, is universally valid for every free and reasonable being. But the only species of beings of this kind which we know, the human species, is developed in time according to the laws of a necessary progress. At every stage in this development it was not possessed of an equal aptitude for understanding a moral law. The most we can say is that, with time, the aptitude becomes greater and greater. Then, the existence of our species depends upon a great number of natural conditions--astronomical, physical, biological, sociological. If these conditions were different, which is not an absurd hypothesis, our morality would be different also. It is then relative at once to our situation and to our organisation.” The idea of a relative morality is still a source of anxiety to many minds, who take it to be a preliminary step towards the negation of all morality. They think that, either good is absolute or the distinction between good and evil vanishes; there is no middle course. However, history shows that there is a way out of such deadlocks. Was not a similar dilemma put on the subject of knowledge? Was it not even said: either truth is absolute, or there is not truth at all? The dilemma was a false one. The human mind has become accustomed to relative truths; and an analogous solution will end by being also accepted for ethics. The acknowledgment of its relativity will not be any more fatal for it than it has been for science.