This relativity is usually presented as the conclusion of a criticism of our understanding, of its nature, of its bearings, and of its relations to its objects. But, according to Comte, an inquiry pursued on these lines, has no chance of reaching a conclusion. The only theory of knowledge which is positive and “real,” is drawn from the history of the human mind. The laws of the mind are only revealed in the examination of the successive products of its activity, that is to say in its beliefs and in its science. The relativity of science can therefore only be stated at first, as a fact, leaving it for subsequent inquiry to determine the reason of that fact. The law of the three States suffices for this, for it shows that man began by seeking for absolute knowledge. The philosophy to which he first turns is, at the same time, the most naïve and the most ambitious. But a necessary evolution causes him to abandon the pursuit of the absolute, first in its theological form and then in the metaphysical form. Having reached the positive state, man knows that his science, necessarily relative, is limited to “the systematic co-ordination of phenomena,” and the knowledge of their laws. The condemnation which thus strikes researches bearing on the absolute is itself, moreover, only relative in character. It prejudges nothing respecting the ultimate solution of questions. Positive philosophy in no way takes sides in respect to these problems. It simply states that science has more and more cut them off from the number of those which it studies. Indeed it is impossible to apply the positive method to questions which concern the absolute. Now, this method being the only one which our mind can henceforth follow, at least if it wishes to maintain the logical unity which is its supreme requirement, it follows that these problems are in fact abandoned. Nothing more and nothing less. “Sound philosophy,” says Comte, “sets aside, it is true, insoluble questions”; but “in stating the motive of their rejection, it avoids denying anything respecting them, which would be contradictory to that systematic disuse by which alone uncontrovertible opinions must die out.” (Comte means: opinions which do not come within the range of positive discussion.) The problems relating to the essence of the soul or to the “substantia prima” will melt away, as the majority of the metaphysical problems which the scholastics put to themselves have already disappeared.