ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES 



find fresh illustration of the fact that the errors 

 of great minds are often no less instructive than 

 the permanent truths which they have succeeded 

 in detecting. And consequently, so far from 

 decrying the Positive Philosophy or seeking to 

 ignore it, we shall much better fulfil our duty 

 as critics if we frankly acknowledge that the 

 speculative progress of the nineteenth century 

 would have been incomplete without it. Hold- 

 ing these views, and for these reasons, we may 

 freely admit the justice of much that Professor 

 Huxley urges against Comte : that his rejec- 

 tion of psychology was unphilosophical, and his 

 acceptance of phrenology puerile ; that his ac- 

 quaintance with science was bookish and unprac- 

 tical, and that his efforts to found a social polity- 

 were the very madness of Utopian speculation. 

 Had he committed twice as many such blun- 

 ders, his general conception of philosophy and 

 his contributions to the logic of science would 

 have remained substantially unaffected in value. 

 Had Bacon enrolled himself among the follow- 

 ers of Copernicus instead of adhering to the 

 exploded theories of Ptolemaios, that fact would 

 not by itself affect our estimate of the value of 

 the " Novum Organon." And Comte's phi- 

 losophic position, as I have here sought to 

 define it, is no more shaken by his numer- 

 ous scientific blunders than Bacon's position 

 is shaken by the fact that he repudiated the 

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