THE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE RECONSIDERED. ZOO 



Never was there a more unfortunate prophecy, for never has 

 the world known such enormous armies as those of the 

 present day. It does not appear whether he ever asked 

 himself if industrialism is or should be the final haven of the 

 human race. He never sought if it were possible to point 

 out a manufacturing- and commercial city, province, or 

 country where wealth, whether for the few or the many, has 

 not been bought at the price of personal degradation. 

 Whether industry can ever be so reorganised as not to yield 

 these bitter fruits, — whether it will ever allow man the 

 quietude and the leisure necessary for his full development 

 Comte does not say. 



We can scarcely pronounce him a friend to science. Not 

 only was he no discoverer or originator in any department ; 

 in chemistry and biology his influence was distinctly retro- ■ 

 grade. 



He certainly assigns to philosophers, in his sense of the 

 word, a position something like that commonly held by the 

 priesthood. But he subordinates Science to Emotionahsm. 

 Hence Ave find his followers, almost to a man, taking part in 

 "anti-movements," or even, in their own language, '• setting 

 bounds to the inroads of Science." 



Comte held " science a futile, frivolous pursuit, unworthy 

 of greater respect than a game of chess unless its issue be 

 in some enlarged conception of man's life and destiny." In 

 other words he did not feel that love of abstract truth for 

 its own sake which actuates our great investigators. He 

 was more of a moralist than a scientist, and his morals we 

 may estimate from the fact that he deserted his faithful 

 and devoted wife and attached himself to the wife of a 

 convict ! 



The Philosophie Positive can scarcely be held to form an 

 epoch in the spiritual history of the world. In comparison 

 with evolutionism it appears barren in results of value. Just 

 as the advocates of peace at any price have before now 

 involved us in war at a very high price — ^jnst as the philanthro- 

 pist often finds that he has been multiplying misery, or at 

 best transferring the rights of the prudent to the reckless — so 

 Comte and his disciples, in the hope of uniting all intel- 

 lectual activity into one harmonious whole, have succeeded in 

 generating a new heresy and a new intolerance. 



I hope I have not expressed myself with any unjusti- 

 fiable bitterness, but as, at the instigation of the late G. H. 

 Lewes, I undertook a most careful study of Comte's work. 



