496 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. iil 



other to the interests of humanity, and upon this the entire 

 intellectual resources of the theoretic mind should be con- 

 centrated, untU it is either resolved, or has to be given up as 

 insoluble ; after which mankind should go on to another, to 

 be pursued with similar exclusiveness." ^ It only remains 

 to add that this all-important problem was to be prescribed 

 by the High Priest of Humanity. When now, knowing as 

 we do Comte's intense aversion to certain kinds of inquiry, 

 we consider what would have been the result could such 

 a system have gone into operation forty years ago ; when we 

 reflect that Bessel would never have been allowed to measure 

 the parallax of a star, that the cell- doctrine in biology would 

 have been hopelessly doomed, that Mr. Darwin's researches 

 would have been prohibited as useless, that the correlation 

 of forces would have still remained undiscovered, that psy- 

 chology would have been ruled out once for all, that the new 

 chemistry would not have come into existence, and that 

 spectrum analysis would never have been heard of; when 

 we reflect upon all this, we may v/ell thank God for the 

 constitution of things which makes it impossible that the 

 well-being of the human race should ever be irrevocably 

 staked upon the wisdom or folly of a single speculative 

 thinker. 



So far as our present purpose is concerned, it would be 

 time worse than wasted to present in further detail Comte's 

 purely whimsical and arbitrary proposals for the remodelling 

 of society. As questions of philosophy they possess neither 

 interest nor value : they are interesting solely as throwing 

 light upon the morbid psychology of a powerful mind, fertile 

 in suggestions, but hopelessly deficient in humour. Whf>ever 

 wishes to learn their character can do so at the expense of 

 wading through one of the most dismal books in all literature 

 — the Caiechisme Positiviste. Enough has been said to esta- 

 blish the fact that in breaking with the past and seeking to 

 * Mill, Auguste ConUe and Fosiiivism, p. 164. 



