252 J. VV. SLATER, ESQ., ON 



the central idea of reproduction, and it may further be 

 pronounced not more intelKgible than the tiring to be 

 defined. 



Comte regards tissues as being for the animal and the 

 plant what molecules are for chemical compounds. He 

 objects to the life-monads of the physio-philosophers. On 

 cells he has nothing to say. But it must be particularly 

 and regretfully noted that he does not accept the views of 

 his great countryman Lamarck or of Darwin, but regards 

 organic species as fixed and permanent. He does not, indeed, 

 tell us that species have existed for ever, or came into being 

 spontaneously. Nor does he assert that they were ever 

 created such as we now find them. Creation, indeed, would 

 pi'ove a difiicult task for Comte's newly invented God, 

 " human nature in the abstract." The subject is in fact 

 shelved, and thus a great and most interesting portion of 

 the science of life is renounced. The '' Positivists," indeed, 

 raise the plea that science does not legitimately deal with 

 (u-igins. Be it so : Evolution is the name of a mode not of 

 beginning, but of continuance. 



Darwin nowhere attempts to explain the origin of life, the 

 passage from the inorganic to the organic. 



How much Comte has missed by failing to appreciate the 

 doctrine of evolution it is not easy to sum up. Acting as he 

 did, he has betrayed a proof of deficiency in profound philo- 

 sophic insight, in the spirit wliich foresees and foretells the 

 future track of discovery. More than this, he has thrown his 

 weight into the scale of the reactionary school of Cuvier. 

 With, I believe, the single exception of G. H. Lewes, all the 

 leading positivists in England and France still think it in- 

 cumbent upon them not merely to reject, but to vituperate 

 evolution. M. Robin and Mr. Oswald Dawson denounce 

 Darwin with the utmost volubility. Whether this is vindic- 

 tive jealousy springing from the fact that evolution is a bril- 

 liant success and positivism a signal failure I have no means 

 of ascertaining. 



We may next come to a consideration of Comte's phre- 

 nology. Rejecting the threadbare craniological system 

 devised by Gall, he still adopts the principle that the brain 

 consists of a number of distinct organs, each the seat of some 

 special faculty. But he allots to each faculty its seat, not in 

 obedience to comparative observations, but arbitrarily, i.e., 

 according to Comte's notions of where tliey ought to be fixed. 

 He leaves to anatomists the task of discovering evidence in 



