within its reach, shuts up the avenues to the soul through which alone the grace of the Gospel can enter. The soul reaches out for nothing above itself, is stirred with no want which cannot be supplied from a human source, yearns not for the peculiar good which Christ was sent into the world to bestow. The Stoic morality was, in many respects, the noblest which was known to the ancient world; but the number of Stoics who received the Gospel was very small. They rested upon themselves. But let the soul be struck with a sense of its loneliness without God, and especially with a sense of its guilt and need of forgiveness, and there will follow a new per ception. God will be recognized in His word, as well as His works. The ministry of Christ will be seen to be adapted to the deepest necessities of the spirit. "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick."

ARTICLE VII.-—AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM.

Cours de Philosophie Positive. Par AUGUSTE COMTE, Répétiteur d'Analyse transcendante et de Mécanique rationelle à l'École Polytechnique, et Examinateur des Candidats qui se destinent à cette École. Deuxième Édition, Augmentée d'une Préface, par É. Littré, et d'une Table alphabétique des Matières. Paris J. B. Baillière et Fils. 1864. (Six volumes.)

Système de Politique Positive. Par AUGUSTE COMTE, Auteur du Système de Philosophie Positive. Ordre et Progrès. Paris: Chez Carilian-Goury et Vor. Dalmont. 1851, 1852, and 1853. (Three volumes published in successive years.)

GENEALOGY OF POSITIVISM.

In a previous Article (New Englander, Jan., 1873, p. 56) we presented a brief notice of the life of M. Comte, as preliminary to an attempt to estimate his writings, and the system of positivism which they set forth. By a persual of the Article abovenamed, the reader will perceive a mixture of motives and influences at work on the mind of the author, not altogether favorable to clear conceptions of truth or foretokening an unbiased treatment of facts.

Hence, in attempting to account for the origin and character of positivism, it is necessary to bear in mind, that it was not simply and primarily a well considered effort, like the philosophy of Emanuel Kant, to systematize the results of human thinking in the past, and to leave a more shapely system of thought to the inheritance of the future. Positivism, as a system of thought, originated in a raison d'être outside of itself. It was constructed not primarily to meet the logical necessities of the human intellect. Its primary object and aim were to meet the practical necessities of human society. If it aims incidentally to supply a want of the intellect, it does so, in order thereby the better to subserve the practical interests of society. In the words of the author, his "aim from the outset was

rather social than intellectual" (Politique Positive, Tome i, page 7). The reader will notice, as we proceed, the influence of this bias of the author in giving shape to his system of philosophy.

We have seen that M. Comte, at the early age of fourteen, had entered fully into the revolutionary spirit of his time, and that his mind was already busy with thoughts of a universal philosophical regeneration and political reconstruction (Philosophie Positive, Tome vi, page 7). The youth and early manhood of the young philosopher coincided with one of the most stirring epochs of French history,-covering the period of the consulate and empire of Napoleon the Great,his first down-fall, restoration, and final overthrow,—and the first and second restorations of the Bourbons. It is not strange that a thoughtful youth, born and reared amid such events, should have been drawn to the social and political problems, which had arisen for solution, in spite of tastes and aptitudes which bore him in the direction of scientific pursuits.

Carrying these problems with him to the Polytechnic School, M. Comte was led by his scientific studies to conceive of vital and social phenomena as subjected to the control of invariable natural laws, not less rigid than those which bear sway in the phenomena of inorganic matter. This conception seems to have suggested to M. Comte what he regarded as the secret of the social and political disorders which prevailed around him. He seemed to himself to see, that while human affairs obey their own peculiar laws of equilibrium and motion, men were trying to base society and government on mere fictions and abstractions. Sympathizing with the prevailing unbelief, he was not long in coming to the conclusion, that the instability. of social order and political institutions around him was the result of attempting to build the institutions of society and government on the uncertain foundations of theological dogmas and abstract conceptions of metaphysics, instead of basing these institutions on well-ascertained invariable laws.

As all useful mechanical inventions are based on a knowl edge of the forces and laws of material nature, so, thought M. Comte, should all plans and efforts for establishing a stable order of society and government be based on a knowledge

of the invariable natural laws which bear sway in human affairs. Believing that the prevailing theories of society and government were based on groundless assumptions and delusive speculations, regardless of the laws of human nature, he set himself to the task of discrediting finally and forever those assumptions and speculations, and of establishing once for all those laws of human nature, and of human society, which should constitute the immovable basis of stable institutions for all time to come.

Nothing is more conspicuous, in the writings of M. Comte, than his intense conviction, that most of the evils which befel the nations of Europe, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, grew out of the ascendancy and influence of false theological dogmas and delusive metaphysical abstractions, in the control of social and political movements. He believed that history

was full of similar illustrations of the evil influence of theological beliefs and metaphysical speculations in shaping the course of events in the past. On the theory of the divine rights of governments and the corresponding obligations of the governed, he had seen peoples and nations alternately plundered at home, and sacrificed by thousands on fields of slaughter abroad. In the assertion of human rights,-mere metaphysical abstractions, in the estimation of M. Comte, he had seen the machinery of government shattered to atoms, the framework of society dissolved, and anarchy glutting itself with human slaughter, till forced to desist from its carnival of blood, by very weariness and satiety.

Such being the author's view as regards the sources of the social and political disorders of his time, he could look upon no remedy for the prevailing evils as effectual and final, which did not aim to dry up the fountains from which he believed those evils to spring. If, to the apprehension of M. Comte, the studies of the Polytechnic School had suggested the sources of the social and political evils so rife in his time, fortunately, as he believed, they also put him on the track of the remedy for those evils. He speaks of the luminuous influence and salutary discipline of his mathematical and scientific studies, in preparing him to deal with the social and political questions which were agitating the public mind. As the result of this

influence and discipline, he became convinced, before the age of nineteen, of the nescessity of applying the spirit and methods of the exact sciences to speculations on vital and social phenomena. He refers to a new mode of philosophizing, which he had learned at this institution (Phil. Pos., T. vi, pp. 7, 8). The new mode of philosophizing naturally took its place in the dream of a regenerated philosophy, which the author was indulging. The next step was plain,-namely, the application of the new method in testing the theological and metaphysical doctrines, which were the alleged sources of so much evil.

In bringing the prevailing theological conceptions to the tests of scientific verification, M. Comte thought he was able to prove them baseless assumptions, having no foundation in observed facts. The abstract conceptions of metaphysics, in like manner, vanished into nothing before the searching tests supplied by the new mode of philosophizing. In the estimation of the author, theology and metaphysics were proved alike delusive and vain, made up of groundless assumptions, touching questions which are, in their nature, inaccessible to the human faculties. Hence, the philosophy, which assumes the task of regenerating human thought, and of constituting a basis for the reconstruction of society and government in coming ages, must first and foremost disenthrall the human race from its bondage to theological dogmas and metaphysical abstractions. Such an aim is seen running through all the writings of M. Comte. The whole system of the Positive Philosophy is shaped with reference to this purpose. Indeed, in this purpose and aim we find the primordial germ and law of evolution of positivism.

This animating spirit of positivism is conspicuous in the definitions and explanations with which the system is introduced by the author. He tells us that he employs the term philosophy in the acceptation of the ancients, adding the term positive to indicate a mode of philosophizing which has for its object the co-ordination of observed facts (Phil. Pos., T. i, p. 5). The significance and aim of this definition will be perceived, if we remember that the author everywhere assumes that the exist ence of a Deity is not and never can be an observed fact, or so based on observed facts as to admit of any legitimate mode of