COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



the control of public education in France was 

 to be given to Comte. In twelve years the Em- 

 peror Napoleon was to resign in favour of a 

 Comtist triumvirate. In thirty-three years the 

 religion of Humanity was to be definitely es- 

 tablished. As Mr. Mill says, " a man may be 

 deemed happy, but scarcely modest, who had 

 such boundless confidence in his own powers of 

 foresight, and expected to complete a triumph 

 of his own ideas on the reconstitution of society 

 within the possible limits of his lifetime. If he 

 could live (he said) to the age of Fontenelle, 

 or of Hobbes, or even of Voltaire, he should 

 see all this realized, or as good as realized." 



But what we have here to note is not espe- 

 cially the personal conceit of the project, or the 

 marks of insanity clearly indicated in these in- 

 ordinate expectations ; what we have to note is 

 the mode of genesis of this wild scheme. Ex- 

 travagant beyond all comparison as Comte*s 

 proposals for remodelling religion and society 

 undoubtedly were, they can nevertheless be 

 easily traced, in their general outlines, back to 

 the two errors which I have above signalized as 

 the fundamental errors of Positivism. The first 

 error — the ignoring of Deity — necessitated a 

 complete rupture with Christian forms of reli- 

 gion ; and the second error — the belief that 

 society can be reorganized by a change in for- 

 mulas of belief — led naturally to the attempt to 



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