tility and opposition of Nature are made instrumental to the attainment of a higher good. Yet, the victory being won, we may be allowed, at least in poetic rapture, to forget the discord between man and the world he inhabits; or to regard it as existing only with a view to that higher good which has resulted from it. For, "l'existence humaine ne s'informe guère du temps qui exigea sa préparation spontanée." When we consider Nature as summed up in man, we learn "to love the natural order as the basis of the artificial order," produced by humanity, "so as to renew, under a better form, the fetichist affections." In his last work, Comte carries this extension of poetic license to its farthest point, and bids us add to our adoration of humanity, as the "Grand Être," an adoration of space, as the "Grand Milieu," and of the earth, as the "Grand Fetiche"; and he would have us think of these two as yearning for the birth and development of Humanity. Comte's system, therefore, as in a more familiar text, "the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God"; and that optimism, which is rejected at the beginning as truth, is brought in at the

In

end as poetry. Only, poetry is not, as with the Apostle, the anticipation or foretaste of knowledge; it is the substitute provided because knowledge is absent and unattainable.

For our purpose it is not necessary to go beyond this point. The minute prescriptions of the fourth volume of the "Politique Positive" add little or nothing to the general meaning of the system. The positivist New Jerusalem is as definitely determined and measured as the Holy City of the Apocalypse; but the main interest of such details is for the church and not for the world.

CHAPTER II.

THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF COMTE'S PHILOSOPHY-HIS OPPOSITION TO METAPHYSIC AND THEOLOGY.

Growth of a new view of the social organism opposed at once to Individualism and Socialism-Comte and the German Idealists -Meaning of his attack on Metaphysic-His real agreement with modern metaphysicians-He adopts Locke's principles as to knowledge, yet is opposed to the Individualism of Locke's French disciples--He attacks as a Nominalist and Nominalism as a Realist, and is really guided by a higher principle than either-His mistaken attitude towards the Critical Philosophy-Relation of Philosophy to Science-It makes men conscious of their guiding principles-Comte's unconsciousness of the categories that guide his thought-Consequent defects in his view of the development of Religion, of Philosophy, and of Science Mr. Spencer's criticism and Littre's answer—Ambiguity in the opposition between the universal and the particular.

IN the previous chapter I have given a sketch. of Comte's system, and especially of that part of it which has attracted least attention in this country—the social philosophy of the “Politique

New Views of the Social Bond. 57

Positive." In this and the subsequent chapters I propose to make a few criticisms on the system, with the view of exhibiting the fundamental tendencies of thought which are manifested in it, and of contrasting the manifestation of those tendencies in Comte, with their manifestation in other writers, especially in the great German idealists of the beginning of this century, In these criticisms I shall observe the same relative limitation as in the previous chapter, and shall give most attention to the social and religious results of Comte's philosophy. As, however, it is impossible to separate these from the philosophical principles upon which they are based, it will be necessary, in the first place, to examine the ideas of Comte as to the development of human thought in general, and of science in particular.

of Comte's

new view of

the social

Comte, like every great writer, was a son of Tendency his time; and his greatness is measured by the time to a degree in which he brought to articulate expres- organism. sion the ideas which were unconsciously, or half consciously, working upon the minds of those around him. The great emancipating movement of thought in the eighteenth century, which found

its clearest expression in the works of Hume and Voltaire, and which was kindled into revolutionary passion by Rousseau, awakened, by way of reaction, an equally extreme movement both in theory and practice, toward the reassertion of authority and social order. But in the midst of this flux and reflux of the popular consciousness, and still more after the extreme limits of each of these movements became clearly marked, a new idea was gradually taking possession of all minds that could rise above the atmosphere of party. Emancipation, pushed to the extent of isolating the individual from that general life through which alone he can become a moral, or even a rational being, and rebellion, pushed to the extent of severing the present from that past upon which it is necessarily based, had for their natural counterparts an equally exaggerated panic of reaction, and an equally indiscriminate admiration. of past forms of thought and life. Even in Rousseau the idea of savage isolation is crossed by longing reminiscences of the patriarchal state, and of the republics of antiquity; and the romantic spirit, with its revival of medieval types and models, soon began to spread through the litera