26 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PARTI 



wards, up and down ; but it is also true and the 

 truth is of greater importance that high branches 

 of science are dependent on the results of lower and 

 simpler branches. In spite of the prejudices of phe- 

 nomenalism, a scale of values will assert itself as we 

 deal with the different branches of human knowledge. 

 Of course Comte had his own explanation of the 

 origin of this scale of values. It is purely subjective, 

 a matter of human convenience. To take things in 

 this order suits us, and therefore we rightly do so ; 

 for intellectual curiosity is always to be kept in 

 subordination to the claims of the affections. But 

 how does it happen that human knowledge, upon 

 the whole, lends obedience to the demands of the 

 moral nature ? How is it that knowledge comes to 

 us, imperfectly but really, in the form of a system, 

 where the later parts imply the previous parts and 

 carry us further on ? In other words, how comes it 

 that our subjective synthesis does not distort the 

 knowledge which phenomena afford, but rather brings 

 out its inner meaning ? Comte is in a curious half- 

 way position between phenomenalism, to which one 

 fact is as good as another, and idealism, to which 

 knowledge is a thing that objectively and really 

 grades itself. It is a thin disguise of intellectual 

 helplessness when Comte asserts that we have such 

 a grouping of phenomena in our knowledge, but that 

 the grouping is due merely to man's capricious regard 

 for the interests of his own species. "Facts are 

 chiels that winna ding." They are not so easily 

 manipulated as Comte implies. 



Putting the matter in our own way, we may say 

 that Comte' s positive and constructive teaching 



