Comte himself, their successor and their heir, uses no other language. In his long study of the fundamental sciences he never fails to distinguish the contents of the science from its method, what he calls “the scientific point of view and the logical point of view.” But, while distinguishing them, he considers that they are correlated and closely allied among themselves. He no more conceives method as separated from the science which he studies, than science as separated from its method. Both constitute one intellectual reality seen under two aspects closely allied to one another.[87] To conclude, traditional logic is fast disappearing. In its theoretical parts it is superannuated like the metaphysical philosophy whence it proceeds. In its applied parts it is barren if separated from the practice of the sciences. II. There is however a positive logic, and in it we can also distinguish a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical part deals with logical laws. These laws which, finally, govern the intellectual world, are invariable, and common not only to all time and places, but also to all subjects whatever without any distinction even between those which Comte calls real and chimerical. They are observed, fundamentally, even in dreams.[88] But this universality of logical laws is not understood by him in the sense in which the rationalist philosophers understand it. Comte is only concerned with a permanence and continuity purely historical in character. The mind of man, like the rest of his nature remains identical with itself, through the diversity of epochs and situations. It evolves without changing fundamentally “without other differences than those of gradually developed maturity and experience.” Ancient philosophy claimed to discover the intellectual laws by reflection, as if the mind could think and at the same time see itself thinking, reason and observe its reasoning Comte rejects this introspective method, which yields no scientific results. If we apply the method of positive investigation to the intellectual phenomena as to all the others, two ways only are open. We can look at it from the static point of view, that is to say, study the conditions upon which these phenomena depend, and refer the phenomena to them as we refer generally the function to its organ. In this sense the study of the intellectual phenomena belongs to biology. Or else, from the dynamic point of view, we can consider these phenomena in their evolution, by observing the successive phases through which they pass. And since the life of the individual is too short for this “progress” to be appreciable, it must be studied in the life of the species. So understood, the science of the intellectual laws comes within the sphere of sociology.