Mr. Spencer insists upon the “anthropocentric” character of Comte’s classification, which is indeed remarkable; and he is surprised at what appears to him to be a glaring contradiction. Is not the conception of things from man’s point of view, one of the essential forms of the theological mode of thought, according to Comte himself? Does not positive philosophy teach that man must not consider himself as a sort of “imperium in imperio,” but as a being subordinate to the whole of nature? If therefore we must substitute the objective to the subjective point of view in which man at first spontaneously places himself, how can the classification of the sciences be at the same time “anthropocentric” and positive? This objection would perhaps be a strong one against positive philosophy as Littré understood it. Against Auguste Comte it has no force, for he accepts it. He admits that his classification presents these two characters at the same time, and he does not think that in so doing he is contradicting himself. We must only distinguish with him two successive and different periods. So long as positive philosophy is in process of formation, (that is to say so long as the positive spirit remains special) it is quite true that it is orientated from the objective point of view, in other words, that it goes from the world to man. During this period, it is indeed opposed to the naïve belief which makes man the centre and the end of the universe. But, when from special the positive spirit has become universal, when it has risen from science to philosophy, when sociology is at length founded, and when the understanding realises, from the positive point of view the logical unity which is indispensable to it, this unity is only completed when, in its turn, it takes man for its centre. Considered as an exact reproduction of the real world, says Comte, our science is not capable of being completely systematised; and in this sense we must not seek for any unity save that of method, aspiring only to homogeneity and to the convergence of the different doctrines. It is otherwise in regard to the inner source of human theories contemplated as the results of our individual and collective mental evolution. “Thus referred, not to the universe, but to man, or rather to humanity, our real knowledge tends on the contrary towards an entire systematization. We must then conceive a single science, the human science, more precisely social, of which our existence constitutes at once the principle and the end. Into this human science the rational study of the external world becomes fused, at once as a necessary element and a fundamental preamble.”[27]