He tells us that the race is, like an individual man, Religious in infancy, Metaphysical in youth, and Positive--that is, Scientific, without being Religious--in mature manhood.[82] Now, this analogical argument, to have any legitimate weight, must proceed on the assumption of two facts.

The first is, that the law of individual development commences, in the case, at least, of all who belong to the _elite_ of humanity, with Theology, and terminates in Atheism; and the second is, that the individual is, in this respect, the type or pattern of his race, and that the experience of the one is only an outline in miniature of the history of the other.
It would be difficult, we think, to establish the truth of either of these positions by evidence that could be satisfactory to any reflecting mind.

We cannot doubt, indeed, for experience amply attests, that the religious sensibilities of childhood have often been sadly impaired in the progress from youth to manhood, and that, after the tumultuous excitements, whether of speculation or of passion, not a few have sought a refuge from their fears in the cold negations of Atheism.

But is this the law of development and progress?
Is it a law that is uniform and invariable in its operation?
Are there no instances of an opposite kind?
Are there no instances of men whose early religious culture had been neglected, and who passed through youth without one serious thought of God and their relation to Him, but who, as they advanced in years, began to reflect and inquire, and ultimately attained to a firm religious faith?
If such diversities of individual experience are known to exist, then clearly the result is not determined by any necessary or invariable law of intellectual development; but must be ascribed to other causes, chiefly of a moral and practical kind, which exert a powerful influence, for good or evil, on every human mind.

Montaigne speaks of an error maintained by Plato, "that children and old people were most susceptible of Religion, as if it sprung and derived its credit from our weakness."[83] And we find M.Comte himself complaining, somewhat bitterly, that his _quondam_ friend, the celebrated St.Simon, had exhibited, as he advanced in years (_cette tendance banale vers une vague religiosite_), a tendency towards something like Religion.[84] Cases of this kind are utterly fatal to his supposed law of individual development, and they must be equally fatal to his theory of the progress of the human race.
Hitherto we have considered merely the reasons which M.Comte urges in support of his theory, and have endeavored to show that they are utterly incapable of establishing it as a valid scientific doctrine.