vm.] THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. 131 



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 opportunity of 

 incidentally revindicating Hume s property in the so-called 

 &quot;New Philosophy,&quot; and, at the same time, of repudiating 

 Comtism on my own behalf. 1 



The few lines devoted to Comtism in my paper on the 

 &quot; Physical Basis of Life &quot; were, in intention, strictly limited to 

 these two purposes. But they seem to have given more 

 umbrage than I intended they should to the followers of M. 

 Comte in this country, for some of whom, let me observe in 

 passing, I entertain a most unfeigned respect ; and Mr. 

 Congreve s recent article gives expression to the displeasure 

 which I have excited among the members of the Comtian body. 



Mr. Congreve, in a peroration which seems especially intended 

 to catch the attention of his readers, indignantly challenges me 

 to admire M. Comte s life, &quot;to deny that it has a marked 



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

 has favoured me in tlie 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 high opinion of Hume. After mature reflection I am unable to 

 discern my fault. If I had suggested that Comte had borrowed from 

 Hume without acknowledgment ; or if, instead of trying to express my 

 own sense of Hume s merits with the modesty which becomes a write r who 

 has no authority in matters of philosophy, 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 irrelevant, if not 

 unjustifiable. And even had it occurred to me to quote M. Comte s expres 

 sions about Hume, I do not know that I should have cited them, inasmuch 

 as, on his own snowing, M. Comte occasionally speaks very decidedly 

 touching writers of whose works he has not read a line. Thus, in Tome VI. 

 of the &quot;Philosophic Positive,&quot; p. 619, M. Comte writes: &quot;Le plus grand des 

 metaphysiciens modernes, 1 illustre Kant, a noblement merite une e&quot;ternelle 

 admiration en tentant, le premier, d echapper directement a 1 absolu philo- 

 sophique par sa celebre conception de la double re&quot;alite, a la fois objective et 

 subjective, qui indique un si juste sentiment de la saine philosophic.&quot; 



But in the &quot; Preface Personnelle&quot; in the same volume, p. 35, M. Comte 

 tells us: &quot;Je n ai jamais hi, en aucune langue, ni Vico, ni Kant, ni 

 Herder, ni Hegel, &c. ; je ne connais leurs divers ouvrages que d apres 

 quelques relations indirectes et certains extraits fort insuffisants.&quot; 



Who knows but that the &quot; &c.&quot; may include Hume ? And in that case 

 what is the value of M. Comte s praise of him ? 



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