260 J. W. SLATERj ESQ., ON 



insufl&cient. But even taking- it thus, we might argue with truth 

 that religion has immensely grown as an intellectual factor with 

 the growth of mankind. The savage explains peculiar phenomena 

 as the work of an unseen spirit ; he bows his head when he passes 

 the spirit's haunt ; his religion at the best is occasional and 

 intermittent. Christians and Mahomedans alike believe in God's 

 perpetual conservation of the Avorld's energy and existence as no 

 less wonderful than its original creation. We admit that all our 

 acts and feelings should be determined by His presence, for " in 

 Him we live and move and have our being." Eeligion in this case 

 is a constant force. 



If Comte ignored the spiritual jDower of religion, he laid all the 

 greater sti-ess on morals. And yet his treatment of the develop- 

 ment of morality is perhaps the greatest blot on his work. That 

 development appears to me the most marvellous fact in the world's 

 history. Yet Comte denied that any development had taken 

 place ! It is curious, as Mr. Slater says, that Comte should have 

 refused to admit Lamarck's theories of evolution, although they 

 would have helped him to establish his ideal unity of the sciences. 

 It is equally curious that he should have denied the spiritual power 

 of religion and the moral growth of the world, although his goal 

 was the supremacy of altruism and the cult of " Humanity." In 

 truth these exceptions were entirely antagonistic to the rest of his 

 philosophy. 



Comte's law of the three stages is from every point of view 

 untenable; but he had a firm grasp of certain great social truths 

 which I have pointed out: his historical summaries are sometimes 

 superficial but often masterly, stimulating, and suggestive. Above 

 all he tried to unite the two opposing currents of the French 

 Revolution : to reconcile De Maistre with Condorcet. And it is 

 here that his influence has told. His reverence for the past, his 

 insistence on the correspondence between rights and duties, his 

 conception of an altruism independent of a divine religion have 

 undoubtedly exercised a considerable intluence over agnostics — the 

 only class who can accept his philosophy. Curiously enough his 

 political speculations appear to me to have had a wider influence. 

 They reflected certain currents of political speculation : and they 

 may have aided political philosophers to form a philosophic basis 

 for the Paris Commune and the Home Rule Bill for Ireland. With 

 the Paris Commune the Positivists had much sympathy : and Mr. 



