October 23, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



355 



in Hades, like two characters in Lucian, possibly- 

 talking about tliis very book of Caird's, and vainly 

 trying, with the tolerance suitable to disembodied 

 sph'its, to find out each what the other might 

 be in the universe to do. They would hardly suc- 

 ceed so well as in tliis book Prof. Caird has suc- 

 ceeded for them. He has seen their close spiritual 

 relationship, and has shown how much Comte's 

 aim was hke Hegel's. If in. doing this he has 

 rather dehghted in reducing Comte to Hegel, than 

 in trying to read Hegel in terms of Comte, the in- 

 justice, if it be such, is one natural to a disciple's 

 natiu'e, and also a necessary result of the fact that 

 he has apphed his criticism mainly to Comte's 

 social pliilosophy. An equally thoughtful and 

 tolerant Comtian critic, coming from his side 

 with corresponding motives to the study of Hegel's 

 naturphilosophie, would probably find no great 

 difiiculty in reducing whatever is significant in 

 this part of Hegel to the terminology and to the 

 thought of Comte. 



But Prof. Caird is sm-ely right in taking these 

 two great thinkers to be expressions, unconsciously 

 analogous, of the same great tendency. They 

 both summed up the age of the reaction. In the 

 temperaments of both smouldered the same re- 

 pressed romantic fire, which each of them scorned 

 in others, and could not destroy in himself. In 

 each this same natural and suppressed syjnpathy 

 with the romantic movement gave color to his 

 results ; each struggled with his temperament, 

 and in each this struggle became his system. For 

 philosopliical systems, like aU other jDroducts of 

 devoted fives, are the results of inner personal 

 conflicts of character. Hegel and Comte differed 

 as Swabian from Frenchman ; but their problems 

 were much the same, and their results profoundly 

 similar, beneath aU the great external differences. 

 Hence the concrete psychological interest of a 

 book hke the present. 



There is no space here to go uito the details of 

 Prof. Cafid's discussion. The book begins by 

 pointiag out the main elements both in the scien- 

 tific and in the social phfiosophy of Comte. This 

 part of the work is on the whole done very appre- 

 ciatively. Then, in chapter ii., Prof. Caird begins 

 his criticisms. Yet these criticisms are never 

 merely destructive. The deeper sense of the doc- 

 trine is sought, and Prof. Caird easily finds, some- 

 times perhaps too easfiy, that where Comte was 

 true to himself and to his problems, he was true 

 also to essentiaUy Hegefian principles. That 

 Comte, for instance, in his hatred for what he 

 called 'metaphysics,' stood in fact unconsciously 

 on Kantian, and so on the Hegefian ground, is 

 clear. That when Comte, after seeming to be a 

 pure nominalist in his war with traditional relig- 



ion and metaphysics, turns about and says : " Man 

 is a mere abstraction, and there is nothing real 

 but humanity," he comes upon decidedly Hegefian 

 ground. " The defect," says Prof. Caird, " fies in 

 the unconsciousness of his own metaphysic." 



As chapter u. is devoted to the negative or 

 destructive side of Comte's doctrine, chapter in. 

 discusses the ' positive or constructive side,' in- 

 cluding, in this, Comte's 'substitutes for meta- 

 physic and theology.' Toward the end of the 

 book, in chapter iv., on ' Comte's view of the 

 relation of the inteUect to the heart, ' Prof. Caird 

 seems to us to take his task too easfiy, and to con- 

 tent himself too frequently with inspiring but de- 

 cidedly dark sayings. But here, very possibly, 

 our failure to follow may be a matter of our own 

 weakness in Prof. Caird's faith. 



Prof. Caird's result assimilates very closely 

 Comte's position in phfiosoj)hy to that of Kant, 

 namely, in so far as his thought was unconsciously, 

 a germ out of which a positive idealism would 

 have to grow if it were developed. ' ' Also partly 

 because he lived at a later time, and in the midst 

 of a society which was in the throes of a social 

 revolution, and partly because of the keenness and 

 strength of his own social sympathies, he gives us 

 a kind of insight into the diseases and wants of 

 modern society, which we could not expect from 

 Kant, and which throws new fight upon the ethi- 

 cal speculations of Kant's idealistic successors." 

 One has to believe, thinks Prof. Caird, that his 

 system is ' inconsistent with itself ' and that his 

 historical and social theories are defective. But 

 one finds him well worthy of study. 



Let us add that one does not need to be an 

 tiegelian in order to appreciate the skill and toler- 

 ance of Prof. Caird's book, and to find much that 

 is deeply interesting, not only from a phfiosophic, 

 but also from a purely psychological point of view, 

 in this suggestion of strong mental and moral like- 

 ness under an external show of gTeat diversity. 

 In this sense. Prof. Caird has made a most helpful 

 contribution to what we much need, — a psychologi- 

 cal history of thought as a product of social and 

 individual temperament. 



RUSSIA UNDER THE TZARS. 



Readers of ' Underground Russia ' are f amfiiar 



with the great fortress of Peter and Paul, famous 



as the place from which Krapotkine made his 



memorable escape, and they will recognize it here 



— not as an old friend — but as an old enemy. Not 



content, however, with a horrible description of 



the cruelties perpetrated in this place under the 



Russia under the tzars. By Stepniak. Rendered into 

 English by Wm. Westall. New York, Scribner's Sons, 1885. 

 12°. 



