“Positivism,” perorates one of them, “is an _integral_ doctrine. It rejects completely all forms of theological and metaphysical belief; all forms of supernaturalism, and thus—Spiritualism. The true positive spirit consists in substituting the study of the invariable laws of phenomena for that of their so-called causes, whether proximate or primary. On this ground it equally rejects atheism; _for the atheist is at bottom a theologian_,” he adds, plagiarizing sentences from Littré’s works: “the atheist does not reject the problems of theology, only the solution of these, and so he is illogical. We _Positivists_ reject the problem in our turn on the ground that it is utterly inaccessible to the intellect, and we would only waste our strength in a vain search for first and final causes. As you see, Positivism gives a complete explanation [?] of the world, of man, his duty and destiny....”![159] Very brilliant this; and now, by way of contrast, we will quote what a really great scientist, Professor Hare, thinks of this system. “Comte’s positive philosophy,” he says, “after all, is merely negative. It is admitted by Comte, that he knows nothing of _the sources_ and _causes_ of nature’s laws; that their origination is so perfectly inscrutable as {80} to make it idle to take up time in any scrutiny for that purpose.... Of course his doctrine makes him avowedly a thorough ignoramus, as to the causes of laws, or the means by which they are established, and can have no basis but the _negative_ argument above stated, in objecting to the facts ascertained in relation to the spiritual creation. Thus, while allowing the atheist his material dominion, Spiritualism will erect within and above the same space a dominion of an importance as much greater as eternity is to the average duration of human life, and as the boundless regions of the fixed stars are to the habitable area of this globe.”[160] In short, Positivism proposes to itself to destroy Theology, Metaphysics, Spiritualism, Atheism, Materialism, Pantheism, and Science, and it must finally end in destroying itself. De Mirville thinks that according to Positivism, “order will begin to reign in the human mind only on the day when psychology will become a sort of _cerebral physics_, and history a kind of social physics.” The modern Mohammed first disburdens man and woman of God and their own soul, and then unwittingly disembowels his own doctrine with the too sharp sword of metaphysics, which all the time he thought he was avoiding, thus letting out every vestige of philosophy. In 1864, M. Paul Janet, a member of the Institute, pronounced a discourse upon Positivism, in which occur the following remarkable words: