THE ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPHY 



modicum of credit which we are wont to accord 

 to sincerity when allied with destructive fanati- 

 cism. It is as true that the inconoclastic theory 

 naturally lends itself to the purposes of the Ja- 

 cobin or the Communist as it is that the Jacobin 

 or the Communist naturallyjustifies to himself 

 his purposes by an appeal to the iconoclastic 

 theory. Hence it is undeniable that when mod- 

 ern scientific thought, not yet having reached 

 a dynamical view of things, allied itself to the 

 spirit of mere negative protest against existing 

 beliefs and institutions, it might well have seemed 

 to a thinker like De Maistre to be irreconcil- 

 ably hostile to all the habits and aspirations 

 which give to civilized life its value. 



Now the dynamical view of things, however 

 crudely announced by Comte in his theory of 

 the " Three Stages," differed widely from the 

 statical view of De Maistre ; for it proclaimed 

 that we must found our general conception of 

 the world and our plans for social amelioration 

 upon a synthesis of special scientific truths, es- 

 tablished by the use of the objective method, 

 and not upon a congeries of theological dogmas,' 

 established originally by the use of the subjec- 

 tive method, and afterwards certified only by a 

 perennial appeal to some authority assumed as 

 infallible. It differed equally from the statical 

 view represented by the iconoclasm of the eigh- 

 teenth century ; for it said, we cannot ignore 

 339 



