ABSTRACT
Positivist knowledge, Comte maintained, was the inevitable outcome both of the progressive growth of the individual mind and of the historical development of human knowledge. Comte believed that in his extensive reading over the whole range of scientific disciplines he had discovered a great and fundamental historical law, his famous law of three stages. According to Comte, theological theories which arise spontaneously in the primitive human mind. Secondly, sciences in their infancy research the most intractable questions, about the essences of phenomena and their ultimate origins and destinies, to which theological answers are most appropriate. Spencer's evolutionary theory of history is opposed to Comte's theory of history, but what links the two authors is their naturalism, for just as Comte unifies all knowledge in his hierarchy of sciences, so Spencer unifies all knowledge under his principle of evolution.
