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flashes, of enjoyment. Scott, by his enchantments, strove to create an imaginary heaven. Alas! the effort was in his life, too. The worldliness, there, is most oppressive, and the failure -as though of design in Him against whose decree he set himself-most signal.

But it is all otherwise with Charlotte Brontë. She will put nothing intentionally in any book that is not in God's world, just as He made it; and just here, whatever our lot may be, we are to bear it. Out of the common earth she made flowers to grow; in the real stone cottages of Haworth, she became worthy of an angel's crown by ministering as the angels did to Lazarus; on the wide purple moors she gathered a sense of liberty from the free winds and the open sky, for God permits. this actual boon; and from the gorgeous dyes of the sunset drank in the glorious beauty that He hath fashioned there. No Cross, no Crown, is written in every book; and the Cross is the rough wood of reality, and not a romantic one which men would bear if, by possibility, life were the melo-drama of fancy.

A dear friend of early life to whom, with a feeble pencil, she wrote her last words, says: "She thought much of her duty, and had loftier and clearer notions of it than most people, and held fast to them with more success. It was done, it seems to me, with much more difficulty than people have of stronger nerves and better fortunes. All her life was but labor and pain; and she never threw down the burden for the sake of present pleasure.'

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As she lived, she wrote. The wisest of men gives this epitome of life: "This sore travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised withal." This sore travail is imaged in Charlotte Brontë's books. And where there breaks in brightness or beauty or enjoyment, they come as they come in real life, very glorious and magnificent, sometimes, as gleams from another, a higher, and a better existence, but not as the warp and woof of this. Human life intensified; what there is of joy and sorrow; of trial and victory; of recreation and torture; of humour and sadness; of the profane and the sacred; in a word, of life and death on earth-the essence of this, in that wonderful way that genius alone can accomplish, is what we find in the Works of Charlotte Brontë.

ARTICLE VII.

The Positive Philosophy. By AUGUSTE COMTE. Freely translated and condensed by HARRIET MARTINEAU. New York: Calvin Blanchard. 8vo., pp. 838.

The Method of the Divine Government, physical and moral. By JAMES MCCOSH, LL. D. New York: Carter and Brothers. Pearson on Infidelity. Carter and Brothers.

The Positivist Calendar.

An exposition of the Positive Religion of Comte, by one of his Followers. New York. Methodist Quarterly Review for 1852, 1853. Edinburgh Review for July, 1838. Article on Comte by Sir David Brewster.

Articles on Comte.

The biographical History of Philosophy, from its Origin in Greece down to the present Day. By GEORGE HENRY LEWES. New York: Appletons, 1857.

The appearance of a new island, thrust up by volcanic forces from the ocean depths, is carefully observed and recorded. Although composed of barren rock, destitute and incapable of life, and perhaps soon again subsiding, science notes the phenomenon as furnishing new material to sustain her theories, or confirm her deductions. Not less significant in the social system is the appearance of any work of profound thought, even though it should prove false in its principles or barren in its generalizations. Certainly no one acquainted with the facts, but will regard the system of Positive Philosophy, by Comte, as an important item to be noted in the history of social and religious progress.

The name of this author is widely known, but few have investigated his system, or understood where its strength or its weakness lies. And yet apart from its bearings, the profound sagacity, the scientific method and rigid logic which it displays, entitle it to notice. Sir David Brewster, in his very imperfect review of Comte's work, nevertheless speaks of "his simple yet powerful eloquence, of his enthusiastic admiration of intellectual superiority, of his accuracy as a historian, his honesty as a

judge, and of his absolute freedom from all personal and national feelings." "The philosopher who has grown hoary in the service of science, longs for the advantage of such a historian to record his labors, and of such an arbitrator to appreciate their value." Not less significant is Morell's remark, that Comte's system is "unquestionably a masterpiece of scientific thinking, as simple as it is comprehensive;" and Dr. McClintock, speaks of it as "the great and most valuable legacy which the first half of the nineteenth century has bequeathed to posterity." His scheme of the classification of the sciences is pronounced "the most clear and comprehensive that we have seen or can conceive."

Such testimony as this, is given in face of the obvious faults that pertain to Comte's works. Sir David Brewster calls him an atheist. Although in a popular sense this is correct, it would accord better with the position from which the author claims to be judged, to say, that ignoring all that is not positive-all that does not admit of strictly scientific verification— he excludes from his consideration altogether, both first and final causes. On his own principles, atheism is not a positive doctrine. The aspect of his system is simply one that ignores everything but strict and positive science.

As a psychological phenomenon, Comte's work cannot be comprehended without a reference to his life. There are some features of it which can only thus be explained. Our limits will not allow us to point out fully the reciprocal relations between his system and his own personal experience, and we therefore merely glance at some few of the salient points of his

career.

Sprung from a Catholic and royalist family in the South of France, Comte was educated under the influences and in accordance with the prejudices of the old regime. But at the time of his birth (1788) the whole country was in the first throes of the revolutionary outbreak, and at a very early age, the countercurrent of the new ideas swept athwart his course. His education at the Polytechnic School first awakened and nurtured that taste for mathematical and scientific discipline which is so conspicuous in his works. Connected with these studies, was the early essayed solution of the revolutionary problem, to the in

vestigation of which he carried the careful and penetrating analysis to which he had been trained. At the early age of 24, he was led to the discovery of what he calls "the true encyclopædal hierarchy of the sciences," extending their sphere to include his social and political speculations. He was one of the first and certainly the most distinguished of the disciples of St. Simon, and but for his singular independence and originality of thought, which would allow him to call no man master, might have borne the falling mantle of the aged socialist. Although now looking back with a regret not unmixed with scorn, to his former connection, its impress is yet quite perceptible in some portions of his Positive Philosophy. Unhappily neither its recognition of a deity nor the necessity of religion, any more than its mysticism, has left any trace behind it in the works of Comte. For ten years, he was busily engaged in the preparation of his "Lectures on Positive Philosophy." Early in the year 1826, his course was opened to the public. A severe illness interrupted its progress, the more aggravating to him that he numbered among his hearers men like Baron Humboldt, Blainville, Poinsot, and other distinguished members of the Academy of Sciences. Resuming his course after an interval of three years, a brilliant audience gathered around him, among whom, besides those already named, were Baron Fourier, Navier, and Professors Broussais, Esquiro, and Binot.

From early years Comte was thrown upon his own exertions for his support. From the age of 18 he was engaged from six to eight hours a day in the work of private instruction, nor was it until 1832 that he was admitted into the faculty of the Polytechnic School, and even then only as a tutor of the lowest grade. At the age of 45, when he had completed his "Course of Positive Philosophy," his means were still limited and uncertain. His views were bitterly opposed by some who may be called his scientific enemies, through whose machinations and injustice he was summarily ejected from his office in the Polytechnic School, and thus forced to fall back upon that resource of his early years, private instruction for his own support.

In the midst of such difficulties Comte manifested a noble. independence. With unrelaxing energy he still pursued his investigation. His life was one steady task of continuous thought.

The reconstruction of science was only preliminary to the attempted solution of the problem of social order. It was, indeed, only the carefully laid foundation upon which the last was to be reared. It only remained to frame a system of Positive Religion, and to this work, although in some respects violating his own principles, Comte has directed, and is still, at the age almost of threescore and ten, directing his energies. It is in this "Religion of Humanity," that the peculiar features of his own personal experience are most clearly reflected.

"The Course of Positive Philosophy," is a bold and daring attempt to systematize all human knowledge. It proposes to build up on a positive base, the "encyclopædic hierarchy" of all the sciences, extending the phrase so as to include the laws. of social and moral order. The term Positive is selected as expressive of what might have been termed natural, had not the latter word been dissociated from the proper application of it to moral as well as physical phenomena. It is intended moreover to set forth distinctively that kind of knowledge which is established beyond doubt or question, and which rests upon a scientific base. All knowledge, and the human mind in its investigations also, must pass, according to Comte, through three distinct phases, known as the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive, although to some extent they may exist contemporaneously. The first of these is represented by the fetichism of uncivilized and barbarous tribes. All objects are deified. An ignorance of natural laws leads men to ascribe every event to the interposition of some deity, and the divinity is to be found enshrined in every object that exists. Curiosity awakens interest or produces terror. Wider and more careful observation or the metaphysical state, reduces phenomena before inexplicable save by reference to innumerable divine agents, to a system which consists at first with polytheism, and progressively with monotheism. And here it is that Positivism, basing itself upon "the invariable laws of nature," and reducing the various phenomena to a scientific order, comes in, to systematize our knowledge, and excluding all theory and speculation, sets bounds definite and clearly marked, between the imaginary or the possible, and that which is positively known. And here, moreover, the progress of the individual mind is

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