social existence with the _concrete_ history of human societies,
the explanation of which can result only from a very advanced
knowledge of the whole of these laws. _Our employment of history in
this inquiry, then, must be essentially abstract._ It would, in
fact, be history without the names of men, or even of nations, if
it were not necessary to avoid all such puerile affectation as
there would be in depriving ourselves of the use of names which may
elucidate our exposition or consolidate our thought.... Geological
considerations must enter into such _concrete_ inquiry, and we have
but little positive knowledge of geology; and the same is true of
questions of climate, race, etc.'

And again he says, the inquiry is to be conducted 'stripped of all
circumstances of climate, locality, etc.'

It will be sufficiently evident from this brief statement, that _The
Philosophy of History_ (not _History_, as the letter says) which
constitutes the Dynamic Branch of Sociology in the Positive System is,
in Comte's own intention and showing, a series of bald abstractions from
which the _substantial_ or _concrete_ elements of individual and
national activity, the proximate causes of Human Progress, are dropped
out; and that _History_ in the ordinary sense of that term, or in the
broader sense in which it has been used in these papers, as referring to
a possible Science, finds no place in his Scientific Schedule.

The error into which our critic has fallen, in this case, undoubtedly
resulted in part from the unfortunate confounding of the words
_Philosophy_ and _Science_, which pervades the Positive System.
Philosophy and Science are not, in any proper use of the terms,
synonymes. They relate--as it is designed at some future time to