CH. VI.] THE ATTITUDE OF FHILOSOPET. 487 



beliefs, which should account for the old ones and supplant 

 them by sheer force of its superior catholicity. For five 

 centuries, said Comte, science has been arrayed in apparent 

 hostility to religion, and philosophy has been chiefly employed 

 in disintegrating Christian theology and feudalism : th« time 

 has now come for this negative work to be regarded only as 

 incidental to the positive work of integrating scientific truths 

 into a body of philosophic doctrine, upon which may ulti 

 mately rest a new theory of religion and a reorganized social 

 polity. 



As thus described, the critical attitude assumed by Posi- 

 tivism may appear to be identical with that which is the 

 result of a thorough adherence to the Doctrine of Evolution. 

 There is, however, a profound difference between the position 

 of the evolutionist and that of the positivist, which it is well 

 worth our while to characterize at some length, even at the 

 risk of an apparent digression. Our subject is so very com- 

 plex, by reason of the wide range of its practical applications, 

 that we shall be greatly helped — as we have already on many 

 occasions been helped — by contrasting our own view with 

 that Comtean view which superficially resembles it. When 

 we have noticed the two great errors — both of them due to 

 imperfect apprehension of the nature of evolution, which left 

 Comte, in spite of himself, in an attitude of hostility both 

 to the current Christian theology and to the existing frame- 

 work of society, we shall have virtually illustrated, with 

 satisfactory clearness, our own conservative point of view. 



In the chapter on Anthropomorphism and Cosmism the 

 first of the two fatal errors of Positivism was elaborately 

 described and criticized. It was shown that, although by his 

 theory of the three stages Comte announced his philosophy 

 as a continuous development from older theological philo- 

 sophies, and although he declared himself determined not to 

 break with the past, yet nevertheless his explicit ignoring of 

 Deity constituted in itself a breach with the past which no 



