To those nationals who supported Mexican Positivism (and there were many), "The positivism of Auguste Comte promised progress, discipline, and morality, together with freedom from the tyranny of theology" (Hutto). Further, Mexican Positivism, derived as it was from Compte, emphasized the encouragement of, and a focus upon, scientific inquiry into ways of achieving national social progress measures, while still maintaining the established social order, e.g., a cornerstone Comptean ideal (Marti, "Positivism and Human Values: The Quest for a Social Ideal", March 26, 1994). Mexican Positivism also espoused empirical, as opposed to abstract, definitions of and goals for social progress; as well as systematic strategies and methods for (as we would call it today) the continual improvement of society, or "Total Quality Management (TQM)" ("Social Positivism"; "August Compte"; "Sociology"). .

             Mexican-born social philosophers like Jose Vasconcelos and Antonio Caso, however, were comparatively abstract, non-scientific thinkers by comparison. They were, in that sense, both relatively non-Mexican Positivists; that is, each favored a more holistic, less systematic integration of philosophy, science, art, education into already inherent (instead of externally-imposed, European-based) social values (Salmeron; Marti; "Jose Vasconcelos"; "Antonio Caso"; "Auguste Compte"). Vasconcelos, for example, was "in favour [sic] of the education of the masses and oriented the nation's education efforts along secular, civic, and pan-American (americanista) lines" (Wikipedia). .

             Vasconcelos's ideals included, according to Salmeron (p. 267), the concept of:.

             a living experimentalism in which concur, each one in its own function, the data.

             of the senses, the rules of reason, the projects of the will, all in a harmony .

             which engenders love. The ambition to bring into concert all the resources .