COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



partial demonstration of the relativity of know- 

 ledge, Comte added incalculable weight by 

 showing that toward the assertion of that doc- 

 trine tended the enormous momentum of twenty- 

 five centuries of speculative activity. It is true 

 that he proved this point only by an empirical 

 induction from the facts of history ; and it is 

 true that he only half understood and stated 

 incorrectly the doctrine which he thus empiri- 

 cally confirmed. Nevertheless even this incom- 

 plete achievement was partly the symptom and 

 partly the cause of a philosophic revolution, 

 the character of which we shall more fully ap- 

 preciate when we come in our final chapter to 

 compare the critical attitude assumed by phi- 

 losophy in our age with that which it assumed 

 in the age of Rousseau and the Encyclopedistes, 

 When we recollect how slow is the education 

 of the human race, and how few are they who 

 can serve efficiently as its teachers, we shall be 

 inclined to admit the justice of the principle 

 that great thinkers should be estimated rather 

 according to what they have accomplished than 

 according to what they have failed to accom- 

 plish. Historic criticism is at last beginning to 

 learn this important lesson. And just as we 

 freely admit that in those very speculations of 

 Berkeley and Hume and Kant which we now 

 reject, the point which riveted the attention of 

 their authors was a valuable truth, though not 

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