[29] Correspondence de H. Comte and de John Stuart Mill. Lettre du 5 novembre 1842, p. 132. [30] Cp. infra, book I, ch. VI. CHAPTER IV SCIENCE We may admit, with Aristotle, that curiosity is natural to man, and that we are inclined to inquire into things for the pleasure of knowing them. But it must be admitted, adds Comte, that this inclination is one of the least active and the least imperative in our nature. It must have been still less so in the beginning of mankind’s development; and it was, in any case, much weaker than the inclination to laziness, or than the repugnance to accept anything new. It has therefore been necessary, in order that man might emerge from his primitive intellectual torpor, that the activity of his mind should be induced and even compelled to exert itself by pressing circumstances. Such were undoubtedly the necessities of hunting, the dangers of war, and in a general way, the desire to avoid suffering and death. Moreover, the knowledge which the human mind acquires at first is only very imperfectly real; for theological philosophy furnishes the mind with its first conceptions. Man begins by supposing everywhere wills like his own, and the world which surrounds him is peopled with gods or fetishes. Nevertheless, from this first period, the rudiments of a more positive knowledge already appear. In every order of phenomena some are very simple and of such striking regularity, that evidently no arbitrary will intervenes in their working. Man must very quickly have had a “real” idea of these phenomena. In all the other cases instead of observing the phenomena he imagined the mode of their production; but here he observed the sequences and concomitances which he could not resist; and he regulated his conduct upon this observation. From this humble beginning science came into being. In this way, far from opposing scientific thought to common thought, as most of the philosophers do, Comte, without disregarding the special character of one and of the other shows that both spring from the same source, and that they do not present any essential point of difference. However abstract and however elevated science may become, it always remains, according to him, a “simple special prolongation” of good sense, of common sense and of “universal wisdom.” The character of “positivity,” by which scientific knowledge is distinguished from theological and metaphysical conceptions, belongs also to popular wisdom. Like this wisdom, which the practical necessities of life have formed, science abstains from searching after the causes, the ends, the substances, and whatever is beyond the reach of verification by experience. Its efforts bear exclusively upon the laws of coexistence and of succession which govern the phenomena. And again it is from this wisdom that it has borrowed the spirit of its positive method, which consists in observing facts and in systematising observations to rise to the concept of laws.