we find ourselves, in our present human history, occupying an intermediate stage in this grand onward progress. And this stage is one which involves the culture of a countless host of individual souls on probation for perfect bliss. It is, however, still an intermediate stage, and necessarily liable to the evils and imperfections belonging to such stage.*

* See this point very ably developed in Mr. Walker's "God in Creation." And see also post, & 277, etc.

CHAPTER II.

POSITIVISM.

a. IN WHAT POSITIVISM CONSISTS.

§ 174. AUGUST COMTE, to whose singleness of purpose no less than to whose intellectual power, the present popularity of Positivism is due, was born in the south of France, in 1788. Of noble descent, though utterly penniless, he was thrown into the turmoil of the French Revolution at a period of life when his acute and refined sensibilities and his high love of order and classification were the most likely to be increased by the reaction from the tumultuous chaos with which he was surrounded. Disgust, which a spirit so proud. and so severe, would feel for the multitude of merely speculative theories which then floated across the political and social horizon, united with a strong attachment to inductive philosophy, led him, at the outset of his career, to seek to gather from the facts of history and nature the laws by which history and nature are governed. To this work he devoted a life, which, though broken in its centre by insanity, and toward its end by a domestic connection as injurious to his mental powers by its absurd sentimentalism, as it was to his moral character by its impurity, was at least intellectually pure and unsordid. He died in 1858.

The principal work through which M. Comte made known

his views is his "Cours de la Philosophie Positive." In the preparation of this work he had the advantages and disadvantages attending the delivery of a course of lectures. He began in 1826, and his lucid style, his extraordinary power of classification, and his fine mathematical parts, secured for him the attendance of some of the most eminent scientific men then collected at Paris, including Blainville, Poisson, and Humboldt. His course was hardly opened before he was attacked by a disease of the brain, which for three years incapacitated him for work. When his lectures were resumed, he found his audience increased by the addition of men such as Esquirol, Beriot, Broussais, and Fourier. The lecture-shape, into which his speculations were thrown, enabled him, as he proceeded, to avail himself of the counsels of others, and of the gradual development of his own acute and comprehensive mind. By this means he not only retained for a series of years the attention of the distinguished men by whom his lectures were attended, but he excited throughout all Europe that peculiar and curious interest which the serial form of publication is apt to evolve. Men of science, even among those most attached to orthodox Protestantism, were forward to recognize the wonderful combination of analysis and synthesis, and the severe and exact induction of the new philosopher. Sir David Brewster, as early as 1838, even transcended the limits of the present estimate of Comte's disciples, in recognizing "his simple yet powerful eloquence, his enthusiastic admiration of intellectual superiority, his accuracy as a historian, his honesty as a judge, and his absolute freedom from all personal and national feelings." "His views," says

Dr. Buchanan, "are expounded in a style singularly copious, clear, and forcible." And Dr. McCosh, even when exposing the arrogance as well as the baselessness of Comte's social and theological assumptions, declares that "every one is constrained to admire his penetrating intellect and clear style."

§ 175. In the loyalty and capacity of his disciples, Comte has been no less fortunate than in the candor of his adversaries. In England, his lectures, which in French fill six volumes, have been brought before the public in an abridged edition by Miss Harriet Martineau; and though in this translation he loses the freshness and naturalness incident to the productions of a mind that grows as it speaks, hist text is purged of much redundancy of style, as well as from not a few philosophical positions which would have stood in the way of his acceptance.* To Mr. G. H. Lewes he is indebted not only for a still more condensed and more effective summary of his lectures, but for a very skillful though incidental defence of their principles, in a work on the "History of Philosophy," whose speciousness and biographical interest will carry it to many points to which the severe style and the great bulk of the original course would keep the latter from penetrating.

*The Positive Philosophy of Aug. Comte. condensed, by Harriet Martineau. 2 vols.

York, 1 vol., Calvin Blanchard, 1855.

In the present

Freely translated and London, 1853. New

+ Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences, being an Exposition of the Principles of the Cours de Philosophie Positive of August Comte. By G. H. Lewes. London, 1853.

The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its Origin in

year, Mr. Henry Thomas Buckle, in a work whose elaborateness and plausibility to a superficial observer conceal its inaccuracy of statement and narrowness of induction, has produced a ponderous apology for the Positive Philosophy in a distinct historical treatise.* And in a work destined to a far more lasting reputation, Mr. J. S. Mill has brought to the indirect though potent defence of the same system his fine dialectic power and his remarkable philosophical research.†

§ 176. In this country, Comte's exponents though less able, have not been less numerous. In this direction, the late Mr. Horace Binney Wallace's acute critical, and metaphysical parts obliquely bore, though it is but just to say, with a uniform protest against those atheistic sequences which belong to Comte's original conception. In Mrs. Child's "Progress of Religious Ideas," the positive idea of religion is espoused with a coarseness of tone which may at least serve to put the careless reader on his guard against its essential godlessness of spirit. To these may be added

Greece down to the Present Day. By George Henry Lewes. New York: Appletons, 1857.

* History of Civilization in England. By Henry Thomas Buckle. Vol i. From the second London edition, to which is added an Alphabetical Index. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1858.

A System of Logic, Ratiocination, and Induction, being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. By John Stuart Mill. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858.

The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages. By L. Maria Child. In three volumes. New York: C. S. Francis, 1855.