that philosopher and his doctrine vigorously. Now, so far as I am concerned, the most Reverend prelate might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what specially characterizes the Positive Philosophy has led me, I find therein little or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal which is as thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane Catholicism. In fact, M. Comte’s philosophy in practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity. But what has Comptism to do with the “New Philosophy,” as the Archbishop defines it in the following passage? “Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles of this new philosophy. “All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the senses. The traditions of older philosophies have obscured our experience by mixing with it much that the senses cannot observe, and until these additions are discarded our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics tells us that one fact which we observe is a cause, and another is the effect of that cause; but upon a rigid analysis we find that our senses observe nothing of cause or effect; they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another, and, after some opportunity, that this fact has never failed to follow—that for cause and effect we should substitute invariable succession. An older philosophy teaches us to define an object by distinguishing its essential from its accidental qualities; but experience knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees only that certain marks attach to an object, and, after many observations, that some of them attach invariably, whilst others may at times be absent. * * * * * As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything being necessary must be banished with other traditions.”