"We have no pretension to expound the producing causes of the phenomena, for in that we can never do more than push back the difficulty; we seek only to analyze with exactitude the circumstances of their production, and to connect them with one another by the normal relations of _succession and similitude_."-- "In the positive state of science, the human mind, acknowledging the impossibility of obtaining absolute knowledge, abandons the search after the _origin and destination_ of the universe, and the knowledge of the secret _causes_ of phenomena."[66] It is thus plainly announced that the Positive Philosophy is the science of facts and their laws, exclusive of all reference to causes, efficient or final; and it is even admitted that Theology could not be excluded, were it deemed legitimate or possible for the human mind to investigate the causes of phenomena.
Viewing the theory in this light, we submit the following remarks as a sufficient antidote to this daring but impotent attempt to exclude Theology from the domain of human knowledge.
1.

It is worthy of notice how completely the Infidel party have shifted their ground and changed their tactics since the era of the first French Revolution; and how utterly inconsistent are the arguments of M.Comte and the Positive School with those of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.
Formerly, Religion was wont to be ascribed to priestcraft; it was supposed to have been invented by fraud, supported by falsehood, and professed in hypocrisy; and the Church, but especially the hierarchy of Rome, was the object of incessant ridicule or malignant abuse.

But now, Religion is discovered to be the natural, necessary, and salutary result of the legitimate action of the human faculties in the earlier stages of their development, the initial impellent of social progress, the indispensable condition of advancing civilization; and, on the broad, general principle that sincerity of conviction is essential to wide-spread success, the theory which ascribes its origin to the fraud or the policy, whether of kings, or priests, or fanatics, is scouted as a mere delirium of Voltaire, or as one of those revolutionary prejudices of his disastrous era which were alike irrational and injurious.

And the Church, so far from being ridiculed or maligned, is lauded above measure as the highest extant product of _human_ wisdom; Catholicism is even preferred to Christianity itself, as a manifest improvement on the more primitive form of faith and worship; it is declared to be the indispensable basis of the future reorganization of society, which, when it shall have been freed from all theological influence, its only point of weakness, will still survive, with its separate speculative class, its imposing public forms, and its splendid hierarchy,--an Atheistic society, but still Catholic and One.[67] The change, in this respect, between the opinions which prevailed, respectively, at the era of the _first_ and that of the _second_ Revolution, is at once striking and instructive.

It shows how variable and vacillating is the wretched creed of Infidelity, and how the firm maintenance of truth will eventually compel the homage, even where it may not succeed in carrying the convictions, of speculative minds.