COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



the past, or treat it with contumely ; the men 

 who originated mythological explanations of 

 natural phenomena were neither knaves nor the 

 dupes of knaves, but genuine philosophers who 

 made the best use of such implements of re- 

 search as lay before them ; men's conceptions of 

 the world have been progressively stripped of 

 their anthropomorphic vestments, and the scien- 

 tific mode of thought, which, manifesting itself 

 here and there in fragmentary generalizations, 

 has all along been determining the progress, 

 must ultimately, organized in a series of grand, 

 all-embracing generalizations, reign supreme : 

 the history of human thought is thus a develop- 

 ment, and each creed or system, no matter how 

 absurd it may at first appear, is a phase of that 

 development ; so that to construct a philosophy 

 or a polity de novo^ out of abstract principles, 

 without reference to the concrete facts of past 

 history, is simply to build a castle in the air. 



Thus would Comte have answered on the one 

 hand the Jacobins and on the other hand the 

 Ultramontanes, with both of whom he has, by 

 a strange but not inexplicable fate, been charged 

 with owning fellowship. Thus we arrive at the 

 philosophic explanation of the unparalleled range 

 of his historic sympathies, of the generous recog- 

 nition which he was ever ready to accord to the 

 crude but needful and serviceable beliefs and 

 institutions of earlier ages, and to their repre- 



340 



