Each Department Of Knowledge Passes Through Three

All Good Intellects Have Repeated, Since Bacon's Time, That There Can Be No Real Knowledge But That Which Is Based On Observed Facts. This Is Incontestable, In Our Present Advanced Stage; But, If We Look Back To The Primitive Stage Of Human Knowledge, We Shall See That It Must Have Been Otherwise Then. If It Is True That Every Theory Must Be Based Upon Observed Facts; It Is Equally True That Facts Can Not Be Observed Without The Guidance Of Some Theory. Without Such Guidance, Our Facts Would Be Desultory And Fruitless; We Could Not Retain Them: For The Most Part We Could Not Even Perceive Them.

The Only Real Life Is The Collective Life Of The Race; Individual Life Has No Existence Except As An Abstraction.

Everything Is Relative; And Only That Is Absolute.

Nothing Is Destroyed Until It Is Replaced.

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.