VII 



AGNOSTICISM 261 



Well, I will put your shell over it, and so, as 

 schoolboys make a spectre out of a turnip and a 

 tallow candle, behold the new religion of Humanity 

 complete ! " 



Unfortunately neither the Romanists, nor the 

 people who were something more than amateurs 

 in science, could be got to worship M. Comte's 

 new idol properly. In the native country of 

 Positivism, one distinguished man of letters and 

 one of science, for a time, helped to make up a 

 roomful of the faithful, but their love soon grew 

 cold. In England, on the other hand, there ap- 

 pears to be little doubt that, in the ninth decade 

 of the century, the multitude of disciples reached 

 the grand total of several score. They had the 

 advantage of the advocacy of one or two most 

 eloquent and learned apostles, and, at any rate, 

 the sympathy of several persons of light and 

 leading ; and, if they were not seen, they were 

 heard, all over the world. On the other hand, as 

 a sect, they laboured under the prodigious 

 disadvantage of being refined, estimable people, 

 living in the midst of the worn-out civilisation of 

 the old world ; where any one who had tried to 

 persecute them, as the Mormons were persecuted, 

 would have been instantly hanged. But the 

 majority never dreamed of persecuting them ; on 

 the contrary, they were rather given to scold and 

 otherwise try the patience of the majority. 



The history of these sects in the closing years 



