PREFACE.

THIS volume consists of a series of articles which have already appeared in the Contemporary Review, and which the proprietors of that review have kindly permitted me to republish. A few paragraphs have been re-written, and a few verbal changes introduced to remove obscurity or inaccuracy, but the general substance of the articles remains unaltered.

In the following exposition and criticism of Comte's philosophy I have considered it mainly, though not exclusively, in its ethical and religious aspects. I have not attempted to deal with the detailed discussion of the nature and methods of the sciences contained in the Philosophie Positive, except in so far as is necessary for the understanding of the Politique Positive, in which

the social and religious aims of Comte's philosophy are for the first time explicitly stated. Not, indeed, that there is any very marked division between his earlier and his later treatises. The changes observable in the latter do not amount, as has sometimes been represented, to a sudden revolution, but are rather the last development of tendencies which had been gaining ground in Comte's mind as his work advanced, and gradually carrying him away from his original principles, or at least greatly modifying their first significance. I have preferred, however, to confine myself, in the main, to the social philosophy of Comte and the restoration of religion connected therewith, partly because I have not sufficient scientific knowledge to estimate the value of his critical review of mathematics and physics, chemistry and biology, and partly because, so far as I know, there has been very little serious criticism of that part of his work which he regarded (I think justly) as the most important and original. In his earlier treatise, or at least in the greater part of it, Comte was working upon lines which are common to him with all the representatives of what in the last century

was termed 66 Enlightenment," and now most often goes by the names of " Positivism or Agnosticism." But the distinctive peculiarity of Comte is that he does not stop at that negation of metaphysics and theology which is characteristic of this school, but that his Positivism reproduces both, though in a new form. It is, indeed, just this new element in Comte which gives a truly "positive" meaning to his well-known law of development, which in its first form might more truly be described as negative." For in that form all that it distinctly tells us about the development of the human mind is that man once believed in theological or metaphysical fictions, and that he has now ceased, or is gradually ceasing; to believe in them. In his later writings, however, Comte has come to see that both theology and metaphysics are based upon perennial wants of man's spiritual nature, wants which, as man, he cannot but feel, and for which a real and not merely a fictitious satisfaction can be provided. He teaches us, therefore, to regard the progress of man as a true development, in which the passing away of the first forms of his higher life is incidental

to the further manifestation of the spirit, which was once expressed in them. Hence the last or positive" stage of thought is conceived to be a negation and abolition of the past in which all that gave the past its value is reaffirmed and maintained. It is a higher "positive," which is reached through the negation of the lower, but it is itself a great deal more than that negation.

Now, the ultimate interest of Comte's philosophy lies in the success or failure of this attempt of his to find a new satisfaction for those higher wants of humanity, which Theology and Metaphysic, or, as I should prefer to say, Religion and Philosophy, have so long been supposed to satisfy. It is not difficult to describe, at least in general terms, what these wants are. Philosophy professes to seek and to find the principle of unity which underlies all the manifold particular truths of the separate sciences, and in reference to which they can be brought together and organized as a system of knowledge. And Religion, while it also is concerned with an absolute principle of reality, differs from Philosophy mainly in this, that it is not merely or primarily theoretical. For Religion what is required is such

a conviction as to the ultimate basis of our existence as shall enable us to find therein at once an adequate object of affection and a sufficient aim for all our practical endeavours. Now a scientific Agnosticism, such as is common at the present day, means either that there are no such wants in man, or that, if they exist, no provision is made for their satisfaction. Such an Agnosticism could scarcely find a better expression for itself than the Comtean law of intellectual development; for, as that law is commonly understood, it implies that the whole progress of man has been just his gradual awakening to the necessity of renouncing all effort to penetrate to the reality which is hidden behind the veil of phenomena. On this view, it is vain for man to ask any longer the question of Philosophy, or to attempt to find a support for his life in the faiths and hopes of religion. Man is but a link or a series of links in the endless chain of phenomenal causes; his utmost knowledge cannot reach beyond the relations of particular things to each other and to his own particular existence, and whatever he may desire, to these relations he must be content practically to limit