ch. vii.] ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND COSMTSM. 186 



outlines of some grand achievement whereby the claims of 

 Comte to philosophic originality might be vindicated. We 

 expressed entire dissent from Prof. Huxley's opinion that 

 there is nothing of any value in the Positive Philosophy 

 save that which it has borrowed from Hume. And we went 

 so far as to assert that Comte's generalization of the historic 

 order of speculative development inaugurated nothing l^ss 

 than a veritable revolution in the attitude of philosophy. 

 Yet we have ended by regarding that generalization as 

 wholly erroneous in one fundamental point, and as more or less 

 inadequate in nearly all its points. And, more than this, we 

 have noted that the very weakness of Comte's position con- 

 sisted in his inability to advance one step in psychology 

 beyond the point reached by Hume. 



In spite of all this, however, the essential importance of 

 the step taken by Comte is in no way invalidated. It is one 

 thing to show that a doctrine is not wholly true ; it is quite 

 another thing to show that it contains no truth whatever. 

 When Copernicus, for example, asserted that the planets 

 revolve about the sun in circular orbits, he made a statement 

 which is false ; yet it is by virtue of his making this state- 

 ment that we regard him as the inaugurator of the modern 

 movement in astronomy. It was false that the planets 

 revolve in circular orbits, but it was true that they revolve 

 about the sun ; and this was the part of the statement which 

 turned men's thoughts into a new channel. Now, while I do 

 not believe that Comte will ever be regarded by posterity as the 

 Kepler or the Newton of modern philosophy, it is not at all 

 unlikely that he will be pronounced its Copernicus. Though 

 he was wrong in asserting that in the course of speculative 

 evolution there are three radically distinct stages, and wrong 

 also in assuming that the consciousness of Absolute Exis- 

 tence can ever be abolished ; he was right in asserting that 

 there has been a definite course of speculative evolution, of 

 which deanthropomorphization is an essential feature, and 



