In the positive doctrine, as in all the others, there are dialectics--dialectics which are no longer abstract and logical, but real and historical. They do not seek to see the laws of the human mind through an effort at reflection in which the mind, beneath the phenomena, apprehends its very essence. They endeavour to discover these laws in the necessary sequence of periods which constitute the progress of the human mind. They, in their turn, study the “universal subject” whose forms, categories and principles have been determined by Kant _a priori_. But this universal subject is no longer reason grasping itself, so to speak, outside and above the conditions of time and of experience: it is the human mind becoming conscious of the laws of its activity through the study of its own past. Instead of the “absolute ego” of “impersonal reason,” or of the “conscience of the understanding,” positive philosophy analyses the intellectual history of humanity. It has then neither ignored nor neglected the problem. It has put it in new terms, and has been obliged to deal with it by a new method. The critic is free to point out the defects of this method and the insufficiency of these terms. But, to reproach positive philosophy with not having dealt with the problem in the usual form in which it is taken by metaphysicians, and, for this reason, to put it aside unexamined, is to commit a kind of “petitio principii.” If Comte abstains from attempting an abstract theory of knowledge, he gives philosophical reasons for his refusal to do so. Before condemning him, it is but right to examine them. Had he done what M. Renouvier and Mr. Max Muller reproach him with having omitted, he would have contradicted himself. There would have been no reason for the existence of his system. He claimed to have reformed the very conception of philosophy: can we reproach him with the fact that his conception does not coincide with the view preferred by his adversaries? Briefly that which, according to Comte, characterises positive philosophy, is that it no longer requires for its constitution what in the judgment of M. Renouvier and Mr. Max Muller on the contrary, is indispensable. Are they or is he in the right? The question cannot evidently be solved by the mere affirmation of those interested. The examination of the doctrines themselves is necessary. II. The position taken by Comte may be briefly defined in a few words. Seeing that philosophy, such at least as it had been conceived until the XIX. century, could not assume the characteristics of science, he asks himself whether one would not succeed better by endeavouring to give the characteristics of science to philosophy. Like Kant, he might have compared the revolution he was attempting to that accomplished by Copernicus in astronomy, had he not preferred to present it as prepared and gradually brought about by the very “progress” of science and philosophy.