Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.

In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.

Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation.

The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.

nd now that man's history has been for the first time systematically considered as a whole, and has been found to be, like all other phenomena, subject to invariable laws, the preparatory labours of modern Science are ended.

Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.