PHILOSOPHY, POSITIVE. The distinction of philosophy as positive and negative, was adopted by the German school. Thus Kant's Kritik der Reinen Vernunft,' his Prolegomena zu eines jeden Ktinftigen Metaphysik,' aud his' Kritik der Urtheilskraft,' are regarded as forming a sort of Prima l'hilosophia. preparatory to a positive or formal and detailed system of metaphysics. For though the philo sophies which have successively arisen in Germany since Kants day, such as the Scientific-doctrine of Fichte, the Transcendental Idealism of Schelling, the Phenomenology and Logic of Hegel, or the ;Meta physic of Herbart, are all genealogically descended from Kant's Critic LI review (the review which reason was made by him to engage in, of the faculties of the soul), yet Kant himself, in his Kritik, did not profess to do more then pave the way for a system or dogmata of speculative philosophy. Kant's mein question proposed for solution in the criticism of reason was "are metaphysic. posaiblef" or, are synthetic judgments 4 priori possible (—judgments, or propositions, that is—the truth of which is not learned from experience, and which also are not merely analytical, or judgment, in which the predicate barely unfolds the subject. Thus " all body is extended," Is an analytic:el judgment : "all men are mortal," is synthetical Indeed, but then it Is a posteriori, being founded on experience: but," every change must have • cause," is synthetical A priers, being universal and nocessory, and founded in nothing but " pure understanding and reason." Now all such axioms, conceptions, and principles as are d priori, being enumerated, are resaisled by those who make a distinction between positive and negative philosophy, as forming a negative philosophy, or as drawing the ground for • positive constructive system. Kant held out the
expectation of such a system, as a superstructure to be erected by himself on the basis of the ' Kritik such a system of pure speculative reason I hope " to furnish myself, under the title, Idetaphyslo of Nature ; which shall have far richer matter than this Kritik, though the latter was necessary, first to exhibit the sources and conditions of its possibility, and to cleanse and level a soil altogether overgrown with woods." (' Kritik Vorrede.) Such a system would have been, in the German ',brew, a positive philosophy : hut the Transcendental Criticism professes only to examine and secure the foundation on which, the author sem every future metaphysic" must be built, and is, relatively to such supposed system, merely negative.
The Positive Philosophy that Kant and the German metaphysicians only contemplated was at length propounded by M. August Comte, in his • Cours do Philosophies Positive; in 1830-1842, and his Diseours Bur ['Ensemble du Positivisme: 1848. According to his system the human mind has passed through certain stages : the theological, in which supernatural agencies are necessary ; the metaphysical, in which super natural aids are dismissed, and their place supplied by abstract ideas. These stages he deems incorrect, and holds that the mind now arrives at the last and highest stage the positire, in which it grasps all that can be known with certainty, such as scientific truths, and holds that in other more complex subjects, such aa Biology and Sociology (social science), definite laws prevail which may be ultimately discovered by strict observation and deduction, and that nothing is to be believed that cannot be proved. [Comer, In Btoo. Dtv.]