260 AGNOSTICISM VII 



Mormons, in the tipper and most instructed 

 stratum of the quick-witted, sceptical population 

 of Paris. The founder, Auguste Comte, was a 

 teacher of mathematics, but of no eminence in 

 that department of knowledge, and with nothing 

 but an amateur's acquaintance with physical, 

 chemical, and biological science. His works are 

 repulsive, on account of the dull diffuseness of 

 their style, and a certain air, as of a superior 

 person, which characterises them ; but nevertheless 

 they contain good things here and there. It 

 would take too much space to reproduce in detail 

 a system which proposes to regulate all human 

 life by the promulgation of a Gentile Leviticus. 

 Suffice it to say, that M. Comte may be described 

 as a syncretic, who, like the Gnostics of early 

 Church history, attempted to combine the sub- 

 stance of imperfectly comprehended contemporary 

 science with the form of Roman Christianity. It 

 may be that this is the reason why his disciples 

 were so very angry with some obscure people 

 called Agnostics, whose views, if we may judge by 

 the account left in the works of a great Positivist 

 controversial writer, were very absurd. 



To put the matter briefly, M. Comte, finding 

 Christianity and Science at daggers drawn, seems 

 to have said to Science, "You find Christianity 

 rotten at the core, do you ? Well, I will scoop 

 out the inside of it." And to Romanism : " You 

 find Science mere dry light cold and bare 



