but this does not diminish the utility of doing it, with a less limited
purpose, here; especially as Mr Spencer rejects nearly all which
properly belongs to M. Comte, and in his abridged mode of statement does
scanty justice to what he rejects. The separation is not difficult, even
on the direct evidence given by M. Comte himself, who, far from claiming
any originality not really belonging to him, was eager to connect his
own most original thoughts with every germ of anything similar which he
observed in previous thinkers.

The fundamental doctrine of a true philosophy, according to M. Comte,
and the character by which he defines Positive Philosophy, is the
following:--We have no knowledge of anything but Phaenomena; and our
knowledge of phaenomena is relative, not absolute. We know not the
essence, nor the real mode of production, of any fact, but only its
relations to other facts in the way of succession or of similitude.
These relations are constant; that is, always the same in the same
circumstances. The constant resemblances which link phaenomena together,
and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and
consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phaenomena are all we
know respecting them. Their essential nature, and their ultimate causes,
either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us.

M. Comte claims no originality for this conception of human knowledge.
He avows that it has been virtually acted on from the earliest period by
all who have made any real contribution to science, and became
distinctly present to the minds of speculative men from the time of
Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo, whom he regards as collectively the
founders of the Positive Philosophy. As he says, the knowledge which
mankind, even in the earliest ages, chiefly pursued, being that which
they most needed, was _fore_knowledge: "savoir, pour prevoir." When they