134 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



experience. But his emphatic and determined 

 rejection of the methods of subjective psychology 

 leaves him so destitute of the means for establish- 

 ing this doctrine that it can hardly be regarded 

 as a coherent, though doubtless an indispensable, 

 portion of his system. Allied to this theorem is 

 that of the relativity of all knowledge, which also 

 is not peculiar to the Positive Philosophy. It has 

 been held with more or less consistency by a vast 

 number of thinkers from Protagoras downward, 

 including in the list of its adherents many whose 

 antagonism on most other points has been unqual- 

 ified, men such as Aristotle and Bruno, Aver- 

 roes and Bacon, Hume and Kant. In relation to 

 this dogma, M. Comte is the natural successor of 

 Brown. As Mr. Mill truly remarks, " the doc- 

 trine and spirit of Brown's philosophy are en- 

 tirely positivist, and no better introduction to 

 positivism than the early part of his Lectures has 

 yet been produced." While, curiously enough, 

 Brown's most redoubtable opponent, Sir William 

 Hamilton, has also verbally adopted this positive 

 theorem, although his simultaneous assertion of 

 the principles of Natural Dualism sufficiently 

 shows that he never really understood it. Hume 

 was probably its first consistent supporter, though 

 he often pushes scepticism to the point of denial, 



