Comte calls “theology” a general system of conceptions concerning the universality of phenomena, which explains the appearance of these phenomena by the will of gods. He has not in his mind theological speculation as one usually understands it, as a rational or sacred science. He does not in the least dream of a study of revealed truth. He only designated by this name an interpretation of natural phenomena by means of supernatural and arbitrary causes. Theological--that is to say--fictitious. Elsewhere Comte calls this mode of explanation “imaginary” or “mythological.” It is in this sense that he could ask if each one of us did not remember having been in regard to his most important notions, a theologian in his infancy, a metaphysician in his youth, and a physicist in his manhood?[14] Comte does not allude to the religious traditions which the child receives from his parents, but indeed to the spontaneous tendency which causes him in the first place to explain natural phenomena by wills, and not by laws. Theology is here synonymous with anthropomorphism in the conception of causes. Similarly Comte does not take the word “metaphysics” in the most usual extension of its meaning. The science of Being as such, the science of Substance or of first Principles, is not here in question, at least directly. He only refers to a certain mode of explaining phenomena given in our experience. For example, in physics, the hypothesis of an ether to explain optical and electrical phenomena is metaphysical. So it is in physiology with the hypothesis of a vital principle, or, in psychology, with the hypothesis of a soul. “Metaphysical or abstract,” says Comte. At bottom this mode of explanation is no other than the preceding one, but more and more pale and colourless, vanishing, so to speak, as natural phenomena, better observed, are referred no longer to capricious wills, but to invariable laws.