8o (8) 



much the greater importance. In the history of philos- 

 ophy he will probably always command as influential 

 a place in the modern world as Socrates in the ancient ; 

 while, as probably, Hume will occupy at best some such 

 position as that of Heraclitus or Protagoras. Hume, 

 nevertheless, if equal to Kant, must, in view at once of 

 his own subjective ability and his enormous influence, 

 be pronounced one of the most important of writers. 

 It would be difficult to rate too high the value of his 

 French predecessors and cotemporaries as regards puri- 

 fication of their oppressed and corrupt country ; and 

 Hume must be allowed, though with less call, to have 

 subserved some such function in the land we live in. 

 In preferring Kant, indeed, I must be acquitted of an 

 undue partiality ; for all that appertains to personal 

 bias was naturally, and by reason of early and numer- 

 ous associations, on the side of my countryman. 



Demurring, then, to Mr. Huxley's opinion on this 

 matter, and postponing remark on the doctrines to 

 which he alludes, I must express a hearty concurrence 

 with every word he utters on Comte. In him I too 

 " find little or nothing of any scientific value." I too 

 have been lost in the mere mirage and sands of " those 

 dreary and verbose pages ;" and I acknowledge in Mr. 

 Huxley's every word the ring of a genuine experience. 

 M. Comte was certainly a man of some mathematical 

 and scientific proficiency, as well as of quick but biased 

 intelligence. A member of the Aiifklarung, he had 

 seen the immense advance of physical science since 

 Newton, under, as is usually said, the method of Bacon : 

 and, like Hume, like Reid, like Kant, who had all antici- 

 pated him in this, he sought to transfer that method to 

 the domain of mind. In this he failed ; and though in 



