COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



career there has been going on an Evolution 

 of Philosophy, of which the thorough recogni- 

 tion of the relativity of knowledge must be the 

 inevitable outcome. Herein lay the originality 

 of Comte ; an originality of which it is hardly 

 correct to say that Professor Huxley disparages 

 it, since he passes over it in silence and does 

 not appear to have discerned it. Yet as to the 

 originality of this conception, there can be no 

 question whatever. Neither Hume nor any 

 other thinker of the eighteenth century had 

 compassed it. Lessing, indeed, — a man far 

 in advance of his age, — had, in his work en- 

 titled " The Education of the Human Race," 

 sketched a theory of the evolution of specula- 

 tive ideas ; but it was only imperfectly, if at all, 

 that he comprehended the nature and direc- 

 tion of that evolution. He may be regarded 

 as a forerunner, but not as an anticipator, of 

 Comte. 



As to the importance of Comte's conception 

 there can be no more question than as to its 

 originality. It constituted a revolution in phi- 

 losophy as thorough and wide-reaching as the 

 revolution which Cuvier, by fusing together the 

 studies of comparative anatomy and palaeon- 

 tology, brought about in biology. In working 

 out the details of his conception, Comte, like 

 Cuvier, fell into many grave errors : but the 

 great thing was to have framed the conception. 

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