COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



merable groups of worlds. It is no less signi- 

 ficant than amusing that toward the last Comte 

 would fain have banished from astronomy not 

 only the study of the stars, but even the study 

 of those planets in our own system which do 

 not considerably perturb the motions of the 

 earth. He wished to exclude from science 

 everything which does not conspicuously affect 

 human interests, and everything which by its 

 magnitude dwarfs the conception of Humanity. 

 Far sounder would his views have been had he 

 now and then permitted his thoughts to range 

 to the uttermost imaginable limits of the side- 

 real universe, and brought himself duly to re- 

 alize how by the comparison Humanity quite 

 loses its apparent infinitude. Or had he more 

 carefully analyzed the process of human think- 

 ing itself, the study of which he stigmatized as 

 " metaphysical " and profitless, he might per- 

 haps have seen that the world of phenomena 

 speaks to us, everywhere and at all times, if we 

 only choose to listen, of an Infinite and Un- 

 knowable Reality, whereas the conception of 

 Humanity is but the conception of a Finite and 

 Knowable Phenomenon. Here we touch the 

 bottom of his error. This great Being, says the 

 Comtist, this collective Humanity, is our su- 

 preme Being, — " the only one we can know, 

 therefore the only one we can worship." On the 

 other hand, the Cosmist asserts, what we know is 

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