PESSIMISM AND POSITIVE SCIENCE. 213 



Common to many who by no means accept the positivism 

 of Comte as a scientific and full philosophy. The positive 

 spirit is, in fact, as old as the days of Bacon, who is the 

 true father of it in modern times, as well as of the in- 

 ductive method of discovering general truths, which 

 recognizes and applies it. And the same positive spirit 

 has, ever since the time of Bacon, not merely governed 

 the whole course of physical scientific discovery, but has 

 also manifested itself with increasing force in all other 

 departments of inquiry, and it is now dominant in 

 biological science, in mental, moral, social, and political 

 science, in the whole field of criticism and historical 

 research, and even in much of the current philosophical 

 speculation. In all these departments of knowledge, men 

 seek either for the fact, as in history and criticism, or for 

 the law of recurrence or co-existence amongst the facts, as 

 in science. Even in moral and social speculations, the 

 positive attitude to the problems presented, existed long 

 before the time of Comte, who is erroneously believed by 

 some to be the initiator of it. It is the positive spirit 

 which governs the moral and political speculations of 

 Hobbes's Leviathan, it is the spirit in great measure of 

 Locke's great Essay on the Human Understanding, the 

 completely pervading spirit of Adam Smith's Wealth of 

 Nations, as of Hume's famous Treatise of Human Nature. 

 In fact, so generally has the practical positive spirit 

 shown itself in English speculation, that Continental 

 critics, like M. Taine, make it a reproach to the Eng- 

 lish mind, which, they believe has some peculiar bent 

 from Nature and some special sympathy with the 

 positive spirit, which prevent it getting beyond the 

 visible and tangible facts of sense, and rising to lofty 

 speculation. But whether this last be so or not, and 

 whether the charge is to be regarded as a ground of 



