152 |Cag Sermons, Sssags, anir Lebieh)S. [vm. 



may be said that the beauty, or grandeur, of a life is 

 more or less a matter of taste; and Mr. Congreve's 

 notions of literary excellence are so different from mine 

 that, it may be, we should diverge as widely in our 

 judgment of moral beauty or ugliness. Therefore, while 

 retaining my own notions, I do not presume to quarrel 

 with his. But when Mr. Congreve devotes a great deal 

 of laboriously guarded insinuation to the endeavour to 

 lead the public to believe that I have been guilty of the 

 dishonesty of having criticised Comte without having 

 read him, I must be permitted to remind him that he 

 has neglected the well-known maxim of a diplomatic 

 sage, "If you want to damage a man, you should say 

 what is probable, as well as what is true." 



And when Mr. Congreve speaks of my having an ad- 

 vantage over him" in my introduction of "Christianity" 

 into the phrase that "M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, 

 might be described as Catholicism minus Christianity ;" 

 intending thereby to suggest that I have, by so doing, 

 desired to profit by an appeal to the odium theologicum, 

 he lays himself open to a very unpleasant retort. 



What if I were to suggest that Mr. Congreve had not 

 read Comte's works ; and that the phrase "the context 

 shows that the view of the writer ranges however 

 superficially over the whole works. This is obvious 

 from the mention of Catholicism," demonstrates that 

 Mr. Congreve has no acquaintance with the "Philosophic 

 Positive"? I think the suggestion would be very unjust 

 and unmannerly, and I shall not make it. But the fact 

 remains, that this little epigram of mine, which has so 

 greatly provoked Mr. Congreve, is neither more nor less 

 than a condensed paraphrase of the following passage 

 which is to be found at page 344 of the fifth volume of 

 the "Philosophic Positive i" 1 



1 Now and always I quote the second edition, by Littr<$. 



