COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



that we should submit ourselves more and more 

 implicitly to the authority of previous gen- 

 erations, and suffer ourselves less and less to 

 doubt their judgment, or test by our own rea- 

 son the grounds of their opinions. The un- 

 willingness of the human intellect and con- 

 science, in their present state of ' anarchy,* to 

 sign their own abdication, he calls ' the insur- 

 rection of the living against the dead/ To this 

 complexion has positive philosophy come at 

 last ! " ^ 



To realize the completeness of the break be- 

 tween Comte*s earlier and later speculations, 

 we have only to remember that the deepest of 

 all the distinctions which he sought to establish 

 between positive philosophy on the one hand 

 and metaphysics and theology on the other 

 is the ineffaceable distinction of method : the 

 one insists upon objective verification, while the 

 others are content with subjective congruity. 

 Yet here we see Comte explicitly and with ve- 

 hement dogmatism repudiating observation and 

 experiment, and maintaining, as unreservedly 

 as Hegel, that so long as our conceptions are 

 systematic and mutually harmonious, it makes 

 no difference whether they are verified or not ! 



It would be an interesting study to trace in 

 detail the circumstances concerned in bringing 

 about this singular aberration of a great sci- 

 ^ Mill, August e Comte and Positivism, p. 162. 

 200 



