The _ignis fatuus_, now so favorite an image with many dwarf philosophers, had itself to struggle for recognition. It is not so long since the now familiar phenomenon was stoutly denied by a correspondent of the London _Times_, whose assertions carried weight, till the work of Dr. Phipson, supported by the testimony of Beccaria, Humboldt, and other naturalists, set the question at rest.[164] The Positivists should choose some happier expression, and follow the discoveries of science at the same time. As to mesmerism, it has been adopted in many parts of Germany, and is publicly used with undeniable success in more than one hospital; its occult properties have been proved and are believed in by physicians, whose eminence, learning, and merited fame, the self-complacent lecturer on mediums and insanity cannot well hope to equal. We have to add but a few more words before we drop this unpleasant subject. We have found Positivists particularly happy in the delusion that the _greatest scientists_ of Europe were Comtists. How far their claims may be just, as regards other _savants_, we do not know, but Huxley, whom all Europe considers one of her greatest scientists, most decidedly declines that honor, and Dr. Maudsley, of London, follows suit. In a lecture delivered by the former gentleman in 1868, in Edinburg, on _The Physical Basis of Life_, he even appears to be very much shocked at the liberty taken by the Archbishop of York, in identifying him with Comte’s philosophy. “So far as I am concerned,” says Mr. Huxley, “the most reverend prelate might dialectically hew Mr. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I would 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, Comte’s philosophy in practice might be compendiously described as _Catholicism minus Christianity_.” Further, Huxley even becomes wrathful, and falls to accusing Scotchmen of ingratitude for having allowed the Bishop to mistake Comte for the founder of a philosophy which belonged by right to Hume. “It was {83} enough,” exclaims the professor, “to make David Hume turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot of his house, an interested audience should have listened, without a murmur, whilst his most characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty years later date, in whose _dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigor of thought and the clearness of style_....”[165]