This disorderly system would have died with its author, August Compt, had not two of his disciples taken it up and given it a certain stability. One of these, M. Littré gave a resume of its teachings in 1845; but it was Taine who endowed it with a species of life, especially in his later writings. According to Littré, Positivism would do away with God, the Creator, the First Cause, the Final End, as subjects "worthy of childish minds." He declares that "outside the sphere of material and positive things the eye of the intelligence can perceive only an infinite void." He considers the soul, anatomically, as the _ensemble_ of the functions of the brain and spinal column, and psychologically, as the _ensemble_ of the functions of the cerebral sensibility. He denies all immortality and future life. "The dead," he declares, "survive only in the ideal existence which presents them to our memory, or in the part they played in the collective life of progress accomplished by humanity." There was to be no more religion or worship. Instead of supernatural ideas and the dogmas of faith it would substitute the cult of "humanity." Finally, in denying the existence of God he ceased to recognize the divinity of Christ, His miracles, and the divine authority of His Church. The new philosophy became the fad. It was welcomed by young men impatient of restraint; it was preconized by free-thought in a congress of students at Liege; it descended into the workshops, infested the schools, and became a necessary accomplishment for professors in academies and colleges. The danger was increased by the hypocrisy of its writings. "One of the characteristic traits of modern irreligion," says Mgr. Baunard, "is that taint of poetry mingled with mysticism which accompanies the most blasphemous negations." Out of the union of Hegelianism and Positivism--the negation of absolute truth, and the disdain of metaphysics--was born a new historical criticism, which repudiated a priori the supernatural as false and impossible. This new system taught that: "When criticism refuses to believe in the narration of miracles, it has no need to bring proofs to the support of its negation. What is narrated is false, simply because it cannot be," and again, it declares--"The foundation of all criticism consists in setting aside in the life of Christ the supernatural," and again, "Nothing enters into human affairs but what is human; and every science, particularly history, must bid farewell definitely to the supernatural and the divine."