COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



quiry. I have here cited them, not so much for 

 the sake of exhibiting Comte's mental idiosyn- 

 crasies, as for the sake of emphasizing the radi- 

 cal difference between his conception of the 

 scope of philosophy and the conception upon 

 which the Cosmic Philosophy is founded. In 

 giving to Comte the credit which he deserves, 

 for having heralded a new era of speculation in 

 which philosophy should be built up entirely 

 out of scientific materials, we must not forget 

 that his conception of the kind of philosophy 

 thus to be built up was utterly and hopelessly 

 erroneous. Though he insisted upon the all- 

 important truth that philosophy is simply a 

 higher organization of scientific doctrines and 

 methods, he fell into the error of regarding 

 philosophy merely as a logical Organon of the 

 sciences, and he never framed the conception 

 of philosophy as a Universal Science in which 

 the widest truths obtainable by the several 

 sciences are contemplated together as corollaries 

 of a single ultimate truth. Not only did he 

 never frame such a conception, but there can 

 be no doubt that, had it ever been presented 

 to him in all its completeness, he would have 

 heaped opprobrium upon it as a metaphysical 

 conception utterly foreign to the spirit of Posi- 

 tive Philosophy. We have just seen him reso- 

 lutely setting his face against those very scien- 

 tific speculations to which this conception of 

 ioo 



