826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sideration of the decline of the theological and metaphysical concep- 

 tions of nature and the abstractions that grow out of them. 



All the recent advances in ethnology teach us that man, as far back 

 as we can trace his beliefs, explained the universe by the only power 

 that he knew that which he was himself conscious of possessing. To 

 him every manifestation of power was the act of some god or demon 

 who inhabited the sun, the moon, the forests, or the waters, and whose 

 vengeance (for the primitive man's faith in diabolical agencies might 

 well shame the believers in the more sublimated theories in regard to 

 that cheerful dogma at the present day) it was necessary to placate by 

 offerings, by sacrifices, by penances, and by supplications. No ade- 

 quate test of reality then existed, and the spirit of a dream was as 

 truly materialized as anything that could not be subjected to those 

 most " realizing " of all senses touch and muscular power. 



The whole history of fetiches, idolatry, and polytheistic religions 

 generally shows how strong was the belief in the immanence of powers 

 beyond the human. An increase of culture served to remove the home 

 of the gods to more distant fields, and, as man learned to philosophize, 

 metaphysics gradually encroached on theology. The ideas of Plato, 

 which to him were as real as the fetiches to the savages, were, as ab- 

 stractions, the metaphysical substitutes for the demons that had pre- 

 ceded them. 



The contest of nominalism with realism, which, during the middle 

 ages, waxed so hard, paved the way for the scientific or, in the 

 Comtean terminology, the positive conception of nature. Discern- 

 ing in a great class of phenomena the evident progress of thought, 

 Comte was led to suggest his famous law. As certainly as it has been 

 disproved as a general law that thought passes from the theological, 

 through the metaphysical, to the positive stage, so certainly has this 

 theory a sort of broad suggestiveness, which often leads to otherwise 

 undiscovered truths. The odium naturally and justly attaching to 

 Comte's later social theories has had the tendency to obscure the 

 value of his philosophical speculations. It is a fault (if it be a fault) 

 of all founders of systems to over-estimate the application of their 

 theories. Impressed by the discovery of a new truth, what wonder if 

 they group all things under their rubric, and leave to their followers 

 the task of clearly defining its application ? Although in his construc- 

 tive theories Comte erred most fatally, yet the fertility of his sugges- 

 tions gave a great impetus to a more scientific philosophy, and ex- 

 tended its bounds over hitherto untrodden fields. Many owe to him 

 much more than they willingly admit more than they themselves are 

 conscious of ; and his uncompromising nominalism has had the tenden- 

 cy more precisely to define the meaning of abstract terms, and clear 

 philosophy, and through it science, of much metaphysical verbiage. 



While thus scientific nominalism is clearly in the ascendancy, there 

 is a certain phase of realism which enters so completely into many 



