"Nothing in ultramontane Catholicism" can, in my judgment, be more completely sacerdotal, more entirely anti-scientific, than this dictum. All the great steps in the advancement of science have been made by just those men who have not hesitated to doubt the "principles established in the sciences by competent persons;" and the great teaching of science--the great use of it as an instrument of mental discipline--is its constant inculcation of the maxim, that the sole ground on which any statement has a right to be believed is the impossibility of refuting it. Thus, without travelling beyond the limits of the "Philosophie Positive," we find its author contemplating the establishment of a system of society, in which an organized spiritual power shall over-ride and direct the temporal power, as completely as the Innocents and Gregorys tried to govern Europe in the middle ages; and repudiating the exercise of liberty of conscience against the "_hommes competents_", of whom, by the assumption, the new priesthood would be composed. Was Mr. Congreve as forgetful of this, as he seems to have been of some other parts of the "Philosophie Positive," when he wrote, that "in any limited, careful use of the term, no candid man could say that the Positive Philosophy contained a great deal as thoroughly antagonistic to [the very essence of[28]] science as Catholicism"? M. Comte, it will have been observed, desires to retain the whole of Catholic organization; and the logical practical result of this part of his doctrine would be the establishment of something corresponding with that eminently Catholic, but admittedly anti-scientific, institution--the Holy Office. I hope I have said enough to show that I wrote the few lines I devoted to M. Comte and his philosophy, neither unguardedly, nor ignorantly, still less maliciously. I shall be sorry if what I have now added, in my own justification, should lead any to suppose that I think M. Comte's works worthless; or that I do not heartily respect, and sympathise with, those who have been impelled by him to think deeply upon social problems, and to strive nobly for social regeneration. It is the virtue of that impulse, I believe, which will save the name and fame of Auguste Comte from oblivion. As for his philosophy, I part with it by quoting his own words, reported to me by a quondam Comtist, now an eminent member of the Institute of France, M. Charles Robin:-- "La Philosophie est une tentative incessante de l'esprit humain pour arriver au repos: mais elle se trouve incessamment aussi derangee par les progres continus de la science. De la vient pour le philosophe l'obligation de refaire chaque soir la synthese de ses conceptions; et un jour viendra ou l'homme raisonnable ne fera plus d'autre priere du soir." FOOTNOTES: