Twilight might be protracted through the course of many generations, and still our unhappy race might be able to read, though dimly, many of the wonders of the eternal Godhead, and to wind a dubious way through the perils of the wilderness.

But it would be twilight still; shade would thicken after shade; every succeeding age would come wrapped in a deeper and a deeper gloom; till, at last, that flood of glory which the Gospel is now pouring upon the world would be lost and buried in impenetrable darkness."[85] M.Comte's theory is liable to another objection, the force of which he seems, in some measure, although inadequately, to have felt and acknowledged.

The three states or stages, which he describes as necessarily _successive_, are, in point of fact, _simultaneous_.

They do not mark so many different eras in the course of human progress,--they denote the natural products of man's intelligence, the constituent elements of his knowledge in _all_ states of society.

The Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Scientific elements have always coexisted.
Diverse as they may be in other respects, they resemble each other in this,--they are all the natural and spontaneous products of man's intelligent activity.