vin.] TUE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. 149 



a minutely-defined social organization, which, if it ever 

 came into practice, Avon Id exert a despotic authority 

 such as no sultan has rivalled, and no Puritan presbytery, 

 in its palmiest days, could hope to excel. While as for 

 the "culte systematise de rHumanite," I, in my blind- 

 ness, could not distinguish it from sheer Popery, with 

 M. Comtc in the chair of St. Peter, and the names of 

 most of the saints changed. To quote "Faust" again, 

 I found myself saying with Gretchcn, — 



"Ungeiahr sagt das der Ffarrer audi 

 Nur niit cin bischen andern Worten." 



Eightly or wrongly, this was the impression which, all 

 those years ago, the study of M. Comte's works left on 

 my mind, combined with the conviction, which I shal] 

 always be thankful to him for awakening in me, that 

 the organization of society upon a new and purely 

 scientific basis is not only practicable, but is the only 

 political object much worth fighting for. 



As I have said, that part of M. Comtek writings 

 which deals with the philosophy of physical science 

 appeared to me to possess singularly little value, and 

 to show that he had but the most superficial, and merely 

 second-hand, knowledge of most branches of w T hat is 

 usually understood by science. I do not mean by this 

 merely to say that Comte was behind our present know- 

 ledge, or that he was unacquainted with the details of 

 the science of his own day. No one could justly make 

 such defects cause of complaint in a philosophical writer 

 of the past generation. What struck me was his want of 

 apprehension of the great features of science ; his strange 

 mistakes as to the merits of his scientific contemporaries ; 

 and his ludicrously erroneous notions about the part which 

 some of the scientific doctrines current in his time were 

 destined to play in the future. With these impressions 



