150 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [vm 



in my mind, no one will be surprised if I acknowledge 

 that, for these sixteen years, it has been a periodica] 

 source of irritation to me to find M. Comte put forward 

 as a representative of scientific thought; and to observe 

 that writers whose philosophy had its legitimate parent 

 in Hume, or in themselves, were labelled "Comtists" or 

 "Positivists" by public writers, even in spite of vehe- 

 ment protests to the contrary. It has cost Mr. Mill 

 hard rubbings to get that label off; and I watch Mr. 

 Spencer, as one regards a good man struggling with 

 adversity, still engaged in eluding its adhesiveness, and 

 ready to tear away skin and all, rather than let it stick. 

 My own turn might come next ; and therefore, when 

 an eminent prelate the other day gave currency and 

 authority to the popular confusion, I took an oppor- 

 tunity of incidentally revindicating Hume's property in 

 the so-called "New Philosophy," and, at the same time, 

 of repudiating Comtism on my own behalf. 1 



1 1 am glad to observe that Mr. Congreve, in the criticism with -which he 

 has favoured me in the number of the Fortnightly Review for April 1869, does 

 not venture to challenge the justice of the claim I made for Hume. He merely 

 suggests that I have been wanting in candour in not mentioning Comte's hi<j;li 

 opinion of Hume. After mature reflection I am unable to discern my fault. 

 If I had suggested that Comte had borrowed from Hume without acknowledg- 

 ment ; or if, instead of trying to express my own sense of Hume's merits with 

 the modesty which becomes a writer who has no authority in matters of philo- 

 sophy, I had affirmed that no one had properly appreciated him, Mr. Congreve's 

 remarks would apply : but as I did neither of these things, they appear to 

 me to be irrevelant, if not unjustifiable. And even had it occurred to me to 

 quote M. Comte's expressions about Hume, I do not know that I should have 

 cited them, inasmuch as, on his own showing, M. Comte occasionally speaks 

 very decidedly touching writers of whose works he has not read a line. Thus, 

 in Tome VI. of the "Philosophic Positive," p. 619, M. Comte writes: "Le 

 plus grand des metaphysiciens modernes, l'illustre Kant, a noblement merite 

 une eternelle admiration en tentant, le premier, d'echapper directement a 

 Pabsolu philosophique par sa celebre conception de la double realite, a la 

 fois objective et subjective, qui indique ua si juste sentiment de la saine 

 philosophic" 



But in the "Preface Personnelle" in the same volume, p. 35, M. Comte tells 

 us : — " Je n'ai jamais lu, en aucune langue, ni Vico, ni Kant, ni Herder, ci 



