Auguste Comte and positivism / by John Stuart Mill.

  • Mill John Stuart, 1806-1873.
Date:
1865
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Auguste Comte and positivism / by John Stuart Mill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    cause, it was mainly in order to control the effect, or if it Avas uncontrollable, to foreknow and adapt their conduct to it. Now, all foresight of pheno- mena, and poAver over them, depend on knoAAdedge of their sequences, and not upon any notion Ave may liaAre formed respecting their origin or inmost nature. We foresee a fact or eArent by means of facts which are signs of it, because experience has slioAvn them to be its antecedents. Webring about any fact, other than our own muscular contractions, by means of some fact which experience has shown to be folloAved by it. All foresight, therefore, and all intelligent action, have only been possible in proportion as men have successfully attempted to ascertain the successions of phenomena. Neither foreknoAArlcdge, nor the knowledge AAdiich is practi- cal power, can be acquired by any other means. The conAuction, however, that knoAAdedge of the successions and co-existences of phgenomena is the sole knoAAdedge accessible to us, could not be arrived at in a A^ery early stage of the progress of thought. Men have not even now left off hoping for other knowledge, nor believing that they have attained it; and that, when attained, it is, in some undefinable manner, greatly more precious than mere knowledge of sequences and co-existences. The true doctrine Avas not seen in its full clearness even by Bacon, though it is the result to AAdiich all his speculations tend : still less by Descartes. It A\ras, lioAvever, correctly apprehended by Newton.* * See the Chapter on Efficient Causes in Reid’s “ Essays on the Active Powers,” which is avowedly grounded on Newton’s ideas.
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