6 7 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the true source of human dignity, of liberty, of modern democracy, 

 but the conception of an infinite power, before which all men are 

 equal ? * There must be,' says M. Littre, ' some spiritual bond of hu- 

 manity, without which society would lapse into isolated families or 

 hordes, and be no real society at all.' This spiritual bond, which he 

 placed in a sort of subordinate religion of humanity, can only consist 

 in the lofty conception of the infinite, because the spiritual bond must 

 be one with the mystery of the world." 



The genius of M. Littre was essentially analytical. In that spirit 

 he delighted to trace the uses of words and language to their roots and 

 filaments ; and he performed that task with consummate ability. But 

 we discover in his writings no power of constructive reasoning. On 

 the contrary, he was apt to mistake mere reveries and phantasms for 

 the laws that govern society and the human mind. Thus in 1850 he 

 announced " that peace for the next five-and-twenty years was fore- 

 seen by sociology, and, indeed, that peace was to last throughout the 

 present period of transition, at the end of which a republican confed- 

 eration would unite the west of Europe and put an end to armed con- 

 flicts." In 1878 he was obliged to confess that all bis forecasts were 

 mere delusions. In the interval four wars had broken out, and the 

 great monarchies of Germany and Italy had consolidated their power 

 at the expense of France. We have a profound resj>ect for M. Littre 

 as a philologist, but he certainly was not a politician nor a philosopher. 

 That new-fangled term " sociology" covers a multitude of false specu- 

 lations and puerile blunders. 



M. Taine is not a disciple of Auguste Comte, and he professes no 

 great respect for that positive philosopher. He is rather a follower of 

 Condillac and the skeptics of the last century ; and, as we have had 

 occasion to point out in reviewing his works, he attributes, like the 

 late Mr. Buckle, a sovereign power to matter over mind, and to ex- 

 ternal circumstances pver the formation of individual and national 

 character. We have not forgotten his caricature of English literature, 

 which he ascribes to the carnivorous tastes of the Anglo-Saxon. He 

 judges of the genius of a nation by its diet and its climate. On the 

 occasion of his own reception at the Academy, in January, 1880, M. 

 Taine delivered an eloge of his predecessor, M. de Lomenie, which is 

 really a masterpiece, unexceptionable in taste and style. ISTo one has 

 drawn a more faithful and graceful picture of the French society of 

 the last generation, such as gathered round Madame Recamier at the 

 Abbaye-aux-Bois. But these things have passed away. M. Dumas, 

 the eminent chemist, in his reply to the new academician, touched on 

 the vagaries of a more recent period, and did not leave M. Taine's 

 materialist philosophy unnoticed. 



He told him that " the fanatics of the naturalist school, upsetting 

 language and placing the physical above the moral side of things, con- 

 tend that, to judge of a man's work, you must trace his innermost life, 



