Editorial note — Translated from Le Correspondant POSITIVISM. A. COMTE, LITTRÉ, H. TAINE.

[Footnote 115: As a subjective fact, there can be no doubt of its existence: but this, with all respect to M. de Chalambert, is nothing to the purpose. All phenomena are subjective, and therefore mental, if you will, spiritual; but is there an objective spiritual reality revealed by these spiritual phenomena? This is the question, and I need not say it is a question not answerable on the Cartesian principle or method. Few persons outside of France regard Des Cartes as worth citing as an authority in philosophy, for, beginning with thought as a psychological phenomenon, he never did and never could attain scientifically to any objective existence, either spiritual or material. The error of Des Cartes was in seeking to settle the question of method before settling that of principles; the principles determine the method, not the method the principles, as M. Cousin, misled by his veneration for Des Cartes, pretends: and the principles are necessarily à priori, prior to experience—as without them experience is not possible—given, intuitive, and therefore objective. The real existence of the spiritual or supersensible order, superior to and distinct from the material, is certain from the demonstrable fact that the sensible has its root only in the supersensible, and the material in the spiritual, both as to the order of knowledge and as to the order of being. The author maintains the truth against the positivists, but his reasoning is not conclusive, because he is misled by the Cartesian method, which is the method of the positivists themselves. Malebranche followed in one direction the Cartesian method, and lost the material world; the Abbé Condillac followed it in another direction, and lost the spiritual world; the positivists follow it in both, and lose all reality, and, with Sir William Hamilton, make truth purely relative; that is, subjective, and as pure subjectivity is impossible, thus positivism is positive nihilism. The author proceeds to refute, on the Cartesian method, the denial by the positivists of the existence of spirit, of the absolute, of God, and the immortality of the soul; but as I do not regard his reasoning, though in defence of the truth, conclusive, I omit it, and pass to his exhibition of the inconsistencies and absurdities of positivism, in which he is admirable and perfectly successful.—TRANSLATOR. ]