APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



matter which, for want of a better name, I will call 

 " molecular " ; the second is the doctrine of the con- 

 servation of energy ; the third is the doctrine of 

 evolution. 



M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, might be 

 compendiously described as Catholicism minus 

 Christianity. 



Fact I know ; and Law I know ; but what is this 

 Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's 

 throwing ? 



We live in a world which is full of misery and 

 ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us 

 is to try to make the little corner he can influence 

 somewhat less miserable and somewhat less igno- 

 rant than it was before he entered it. 



The man of science, who, forgetting the limits of 

 philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and 

 symbols into what is commonly understood by 

 materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level 

 with the mathematician, who should mistake the x's 

 and y s with which he works his problems for real 

 entities and with this further disadvantage, as 

 compared with the mathematician, that the blunders 

 of the latter are of no practical consequence, while 

 the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse 

 the energies and destroy the beauty of a life. 



