ch. x.] COSMISM AND POSITIVISM. 257 



first derived from Comte their notions of scientific method 

 and of the limits of philosophic inquiry, to " read into " his 

 system all the later results of their intellectual experience, 

 and thus to persist in regarding the whole as Positive 

 Philosophy. Of this tendency it seems to me that we have 

 an illustrious example in Mr. Lewes, the learned historian of 

 philosophy and acute critic of Kant, who in the latest edition 

 of his " History " still maintains that the agreement between 

 Comte and Spencer is an agreement in fundamentals, while 

 the differences between them are non-essential differences. 

 That I am not incapable of understanding and sympathizing 

 with this tendency, may be inferred from the fact that during 

 eleven years I espoused the same plausible error, and called 

 myself a Positivist (though never a follower of Comte) in the 

 same breath in which I defended doctrines that are utterly 

 incompatible with Positivism in any legitimate sense of the 

 word. So long as we allow our associations with the words to 

 colour and distort our scrutiny of the things — a besetting sin 

 of human philosophizing, from which none of us can hope 

 to have entirely freed himself — so long it is possible for us to 

 construct an apparently powerful argument in behalf of the 

 fundamental agreement between Spencer and Comte. It 

 may be said, for example, that both philosophers agree in 

 asserting : 



I. That all knowledge is relative; 

 II. That all unverifiable hypotheses are inadmissible ; 



III. That the evolution of philosophy, whatever else it 

 may be, has been a process of deanthropomorphization ; 



IV. That philosophy is a coherent organization of scientific 



doctrines and methods; 

 V. That the critical attitude of philosophy is not destruc- 

 tive but constructive, not iconoclastic but conservative, 

 not negative but positive. 

 Still confining our attention to the form of these proposi- 

 tions, and neglecting for the moment the very different 

 VOL. I. S 



