COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



to the external order, there is no foreseeing the 

 depth of the ditch in which we may be landed. 

 The difference between the delusion which we 

 regard as compatible with sanity, and that which 

 we commiserate as insane, is mainly a difference 

 of degree. And whether we are to call Comte 

 crazy or not, is to a great extent a question of 

 terminology. Certain it is, that if Adelung had 

 lived to witness Comte*s latest speculations, he 

 might have found in them the materials for a 

 more wonderful chapter than any of those now 

 contained in his voluminous " History of Hu- 

 man Error." 



In these interesting vagaries we may find 

 renewed evidence of the close kinship between 

 the " dreams '' of the ontologist, the fancies of 

 the myth-maker, and the hallucinations of the 

 insane, in so far as concerns the method em- 

 ployed. Nevertheless it would be highly unjust 

 to hold the Positive Philosophy responsible for 

 these inanities, or for those of the pseudo-posi- 

 tivists who would seem to set larger store by 

 their master's personal shortcomings than by his 

 permanently valuable contributions to philoso- 

 phy. Not only the disciple, but also the impar- 

 tial critic, may fairly urge that the Positive Phi- 

 losophy is something greater than Comte, just 

 as the differential calculus is something greater 

 than Newton or Leibnitz. If Newton, in his 

 old age, had become so far lost to all sense of 



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