COSMISM AND POSITIVISM 



ences between them are non-essential differences. 

 That I am not incapable of understanding and 

 sympathizing with this tendency, may be in- 

 ferred from the fact that during eleven years 

 I espoused the same plausible error, and called 

 myself a Positivist (though never a follower of 

 Comte) in the same breath in which I defended 

 doctrines' that are utterly incompatible with Pos- 

 itivism in any legitimate sense of the word. So 

 long as we allow our associations with the words 

 to colour and distort our scrutiny of the things, 

 — a besetting sin of human philosophizing from 

 which none of us can hope to have entirely 

 freed himself, — so long it is possible for us to 

 construct an apparently powerful argument in 

 behalf of the fundamental agreement between 

 Spencer and Comte. It may be said, for exam- 

 ple, that both philosophers agree in asserting: 

 I. That all knowledge is relative; 

 II. That all unverifiable hypotheses are inad- 

 missible ; 

 III. That the evolution of philosophy, what- 

 ever else it may be, has been a process 

 of deanthropomorphization ; 

 IV. That philosophy is a coherent organization 

 of scientific doctrines and methods ; 

 V. That the critical attitude of philosophy is 

 not destructive but constructive, not 

 iconoclastic but conservative, not nega- 

 tive but positive. 

 105 



