ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the positive theory of social variations and explains the proper nature and the mutual relations of all its essential principles. The general conception of a modifiable necessity, the unfailing note of the Positive doctrine, presents nothing special in the human order beyond the greater difficulty of making it felt by reason of the increased amount of variability. If the laws of progress were studied before laying down the limits within which alone modification is possible in society, the philosophy of history would be confounded by the incoherent spectacle offered by man's progress, and it soon would fall back into the state of chaos. It might seem that the order of human society has now been treated in the abstract up to the point where begins the direct study of the natural laws of its evolution, with a view to showing how far the actual development of society has gone.
