en. v.] TEE TWO METHODS. 135 



for complete proof, and perfect rationalization of scientific 

 processes. It ought to be enough that the doctrines afford an 

 explanation of phenomena, consistent with itself and with 

 known facts, and that the processes are justified by their 

 fruits. This over-anxiety for proof, he complains, is breaking 

 down by vain scruples the knowledge which seemed to 

 have been obtained ; witness the present state of chenr'^try 

 [in 1854]. The demand of proof for what has been accepted 

 by Humanity .... is a revolt against the traditions of the 

 human race. So early had the new High Priest adopted the 

 feelings and taken up the inheritance of the old." Mr. Mill 

 goes on to remark upon the new sense in which he began to 

 employ his famous aphorism that " the empire of the dead 

 over the living continually increases." " As is not uncom- 

 mon with him, he introduces the dictum in one sense and 

 uses it in another. What he at first means by it is, that as 

 civilization advances, the sum of our possessions, physical 

 and intellectual, is due in a decreasing proportion to ourselves, 

 and in an increasing one to our progenitors. The use he 

 makes of it is, that we should submit ourselves more and 

 more implicitly to the authority of previous generations, 

 and suffer ourselves less and less to doubt their judgment, 

 or test by our own reason the grounds of their opinions. 

 The unwillingness of the human intellect and conscience, 

 in their present state of ' anarchy,' to sign their own abdi- 

 cation, he calls ' the insurrection of the living against the 

 dead.' To this complexion has positive philosophy come 

 at last ! " 1 



To realize the completeness of the break between Comte's 

 earlier and later speculations, we have only to remember that 

 the deepest of all the distinctions which he sought to 

 establish between positive philosophy on the one hand and 

 metaphysics and theology on the other, is the ineffaceable 

 distinction of method : the one insists upon objective 

 1 Mill, Attguste Comte and Positivism, p. ]62. 



