Chauncey Wright. 103 



This is a picture which ought to satisfy the 

 most inexorable opponent of teleology. For my 

 own part, I can see nothing very attractive in it, 

 even from a purely speculative point of view, 

 though it is as striking a statement as can well 

 be made of the meagreness of our knowledge 

 when confronted with the immensity of Nature. 

 The phrase " cosmical weather " happily comports 

 with our enormous ignorance of the real tendency 

 of events. But as terrestrial weather is after all 

 subject to discoverable laws, so to an intelligence 

 sufficiently vast the appearance of fickleness in 

 " cosmical weather " would no doubt cease, and 

 the sequence of events would doubtless begin to 

 disclose a dramatic tendency, though whether to- 

 ward any end appreciable by us or not it would 

 be difficult to say. 1 



In the discussion of such questions, called up 

 by Mr. Spencer's philosophy, Mr. Wright always 

 appeared in the light of a most consistent and un- 

 qualified positivist. He hardly could be called a 

 follower of Comte, and I doubt if he even knew 

 the latter's works save by hearsay. But he 

 needed no lessons from Comte. He was born a 

 positivist, and a more complete specimen of the 



1 This point is treated from a far more advanced position in my new 

 book, The Idea of God, as affected by Modern Knowledge. 



