VIIL] THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM. 139 



tions of things and their relations which are more thoroughly 

 &quot;positive,&quot; or devoid of entanglement with hypotheses of -any 

 kind, than they will ever be in after-life. No child has recourse 

 to imaginary personifications in order to account for the ordi 

 nary properties of objects which are not alive, or do not represent 

 living things. It does not imagine that the taste of sugar is 

 brought about by a god of sweetness, or that a spirit of jumping 

 causes a ball to bound. Such phsenomena, which form the basis 

 of a very large part of its ideas, are taken as matters of course 

 as ultimate facts which suggest no difficulty and need no expla 

 nation. So far as all these common, though important, pheno 

 mena are concerned, the child s mind is in what M. Comte would 

 call the &quot; positive &quot; state. 



But, side by side with this mental condition, there rises 

 another. The child becomes aware of itself as a source of action 

 and a subject of passion and of thought. The acts which follow 

 upon its own desires are among the most interesting and promi 

 nent of surrounding occurrences ; and these acts, again, plainly 

 arise either out of affections caused by surrounding things or of 

 other changes in itself. Among these surrounding things, the 

 most interesting and important are mother and father, brethren 

 and nurses. The hypothesis that these wonderful creatures are 

 of like nature to itself is speedily forced upon the child s mind ; 

 and this primitive piece of anthropomorphism turns out to be 

 a highly successful speculation, which finds its justification at 

 every turn. No wonder, then, that it is extended to other 

 similarly interesting objects which are not too unlike these to 

 the dog, the cat, and the canary, the doll, the toy, and the 

 picture-book that these are endowed with wills and affections, 

 and with capacities for being &quot; good &quot; and &quot; naughty.&quot; But 

 surely it would be a mere perversion of language to call this a 

 &quot; theological &quot; state of mind, either in the proper sense of the 

 word &quot; theological,&quot; or as contrasted with &quot; scientific &quot; or &quot; posi 

 tive.&quot; The child does not worship either father or mother, dog 

 or doll. On the contrary, nothing is more curious than the 

 absolute irreverence, if I may so say, of a kindly-treated young 



