130 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND KEVIEWS. [vm. 



sheer Popery, with M. Comte in the chair of St. Peter, and the 

 names of most of the saints changed. To quote &quot; Faust &quot; again, 

 I found myself saying with Gretchen, 



&quot; Ungefahr sagt das per Pfarrer auch 

 Nur mit ein. bischen andern Worten.&quot; 



Rightly or wrongly, this was the impression which, all those 

 years ago, the study of M. Comte s works left on my mind, com 

 bined with the conviction, which I shall 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. Comte s 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 what is usually understood by science. I do not 

 mean by this merely to say that Comte was behind our present 

 knowledge, 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 genera 

 tion. 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 in my mind, no one will be surprised if I 

 acknowledge that, for these sixteen years, it has been a 

 periodical 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 &quot; Comtists &quot; or 

 &quot; Positivists &quot; by public writers, even in spite of vehement 

 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 



