junction with such characteristics. The principles which we derive from this process of study we systematize into a form, and call it a science. And whenever we apply the principles therein contained to any object to which these are applicable, they aid us immensely in coming to a knowledge of the truths of nature.

Now, is this method of studying the human mind purely objective? We think not, and for this reason, in the first place, before we can begin to note what part of the human head is the seat of a particular organ, we must be aware what that organ is, or in other words, we must know it in our own consciousness. We cannot, with the eye of sense, see benevolence, hope, or conceit; we can only see certain actions in the individual, which our own consciousness enables us to interpret as proceeding from these qualities; and we never could have known that these attributes existed in the object, unless we had known beforehand that they existed in some form in our own minds. Hence, if we would study mind as a science, even by the physiological method, we cannot move a step even in the initial stage, without being indebted to the subjective process.

If this reasoning be correct, and we do not see how any one can doubt it, then what is to become of poor Comte's positivism, or the doctrine of exclusive sense-verification? If mental science is to be studied at all, we must to some extent be dependent upon the subjective method, and consequently Comte's "Philosophie Positive" is false and inconsistent. We maintain, further, that Comte's doctrine of the evolution of human thought and religious belief is mere fancy, it is contrary to experience and common sense. It is not true, for instance, that all the sciences have passed through the theological, metaphysical, and positive stages of thought, taking the positive stage in Comte's sense, viz., that science in this latter stage does not recognise an Almighty will and intelligence, sustaining and controlling the natural and spiritual phenomena which are in us and around us. True science, the more we understand its teachings, testifies to the fact of God's superintendence and creative wisdom; for, as Bacon truly observes, "a little learning in this respect may make us for a while atheistically inclined, yet a profounder knowledge brings us back to God."

To show that all science has passed through three stages, Comte seizes upon astronomy as furnishing an excellent illustration, for the stars were once believed to be gods, stationary or wandering in indefinite courses through the heavens, then they came whirling in the metaphysical vortices of Descartes, and then transferred to the positive

department by the Greek geometers; then again, by Newton's proof of the law of gravitation, every hill and tree was deprived of its guardian divinity. The universe at last came to have one God, then it came to have a metaphysical entity called Nature, and lastly both these are abandoned, and nothing now can be a matter of human belief except law, that is to say, the invariable relation of succession and resemblance in phenomena. Now we can have no hesitation in saying that this is not in accordance with fact; that, as an observation, it is fit only to be likened to the man who, with imperfect vision, saw some crows flying, and all birds which he ever after saw on the wing he concluded to be crows. It is not true that all the sciences have passed through three stages. Geometry, algebra, and chemistry for instance, were never theological, and they are as much metaphysical now as they The theory likewise of gravitation is as much an abstraction as the vortices of Descartes, only it explains the fact better than they did.

ever were.

The next dogma which Comte urges us to believe is, that he has made a classification of the sciences, or propounded a hierarchy of them, beginning with the most simple and ending with the most intricate. There were, he thought, six positive sciences to be settled in order, so he arranged them as follows:-Mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, sociology. It does not appear to us that there is much intellectual ability displayed in this arrangement; we do not see why Babbage's machine could not have done as well. We are perfectly unable to perceive why the first science in this classification should not be the last, or why the last ought not to be the first; the one arrangement would do equally as well as the other.

But Comte held strange arbitrary views regarding this hierarchy. We have seen that he asserted that the sciences grew up and passed through their various stages in a natural order, and that he had discovered this order, and classified them accordingly; but these assertions are as fanciful and as absurd as his other sayings about the law of evolution. Mr. Herbert Spencer has now, it is admitted, effectually demolished Comte's classification, by proving that, historically, the sciences grew up in a different order; and the only way in which J. S. Mill has found it possible to defend Comte on this point is by saying, that although the Comtian classification may not be scientifically correct, yet H. Spencer has not shown it to be ill adapted for the purpose for which it was intended. Of course this is no answer to Mr. Spencer; and Comte would not have received it as a defence, as he meant his

classification not to be one of mere convenience, but of the order of nature,—not that which was suitable for a given purpose, but that which was scientifically correct.

With regard to Comte's philosophy of social life, it too is vitiated by a false and exaggerated estimate of human nature and its destiny; for not having any faith in a world beyond the grave, he imagined that the intuitive aspirations of his moral nature were intended to be, or, intention or design not being admissible in Comte's vocabulary, were capable of being, realised in perfection in this life. So he tried to work out, in tiresome detail, an ideal social system, complete in all its parts, in which he informs us there is to be neither sin nor misery. He had been taught by the Christian religion that he should love his neighbour as himself, and he saw also that there were principles inculcated which, if carried out to their logical consequences, would bring us into a state in which we would love our neighbour better than ourselves; but Comte's philosophy and religious unbelief prevented him from perceiving that He who revealed to man the divine morality of the Christian life, provided for him likewise mansions eternal in the heavens, where he is destined to perfect the life begun here. This world is not our rest, neither is the grave our goal. So the Christian religion contemplates a future condition of existence for humanity, in which the pure in heart are to go on increasing in love and wisdom to eternity, after they have laid the spiritual foundation of that after-life here. However, Comte thought that he ought to lay it down as a positive duty that each individual should love his neighbour better than himself, and that if anyone loved himself at all, it ought to be for the sake of others. Self is to be entirely lost sight of. The great mistake which Comte makes on this subject is, that he lays down that which is an extraordinary virtue as a positive duty; for granting that the love of self is a bad thing, and the source from which the most of our evils and the whole of our sins flow, yet religion wisely does not call upon us as a duty to have absolutely no thought for ourselves. We are enjoined by our Lord, in the Gospels, to love our neighbour as ourselves-not more. "If we attain to this state here," says Swedenborg, "in the spiritual world we shall learn to love others better than ourselves;" for self-love is not in itself a bad thing; it is necessary for our existence in this life, and only becomes an evil when it is the alpha and omega of our being,—when it is elevated into the region of the head, instead of being kept in that of the feet. Spinoza has been called the "God-intoxicated man," because he made everything God;

and Mr. Mill styles Comte the "morality-intoxicated man," because he exaggerates the law of human duty, and, I suppose, sees God nowhere.

Of Comte's religion of humanity it would be lost time to speak; it is suited only for secularists, and all those who have no belief in a Creator, Redeemer, and Saviour. We of the New Church can see in Comte and his followers a lamentable illustration of the condition into which the human mind can be brought, by listening to the wiles of the serpent, or of our sensuous principle, in judging from the mere sense perception, in believing that nothing exists, and that nothing ought to be believed in but what the senses can reveal. In believing that we live by these alone, and refusing to acknowledge that we live from God, we believe that we have life in ourselves. In Comte we find the old story of the fall in Eden exemplified, with this aggravating difference, that he attempts to systematise the serpent's teachings, giving them the spacious form and high sounding name of a philosophy. We hear, in this soi-disant scientific principle of Comte's, the hissing whisper of the reptile "If you cease to live upon the fruit of the tree of life, and eat only of the tree of knowledge, ye shall not die, but shall live in the Grand Etre, and shall be as gods, for there is none other Deity."

In concluding this paper, we must admit that we would not have taken up so much time and space, in treating of the philosophy of Auguste Comte for its own sake, had it not in connection with its author been pregnant to New Churchmen with spiritual instruction. It manifests, in the first place, to us in a concrete form, that of which the Bible, read in the light of the church, informs us, viz., the condition into which the merely scientific mind can be led, when, with selfexaggeration, it trusts to its self-derived intelligence, and refuses to be guided by the teachings of God's revealed Word, and to live according to its heavenly dictates. We perceive, further, that even the most naturally gifted minds, when they do this, cannot help falling into all kinds of extravagance and absurdity; and if the Lord, in His infinite mercy, did not watch over and guide man, and convert into good the effects of his folly, he would very soon work out ultimately his own destruction. In the second place, we of the New Church can perceive, in the propagation and reception of the positive philosophy at the present time, another wave of the tide of human error towards the completion of the consummation of the age, or the passing away of the doctrines of the old church from the hearts and minds of its members. It is a fact which is forcing itself on the attention of all intelligent people at the present day, that the ancient landmarks of old church

theology are becoming more and more obliterated every succeeding year, by the gradually advancing tide of religious unbelief. Almost all thoughtful men just now find themselves in a strange state of doubt and uncertainty with regard to religious matters, drifting away they know not whither; recalling to our minds the words of our Lord as given by Mark (xiii. 24.)-"But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then shall he send his angels (messengers of truth), and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven."

Perhaps we may take the liberty of saying that the New Church, and especially its teachers, have at present a great responsibility resting upon them. Upon them, as labourers in the spiritual vineyard, rests at this crisis the burden of helping those who are in the obscurity of religious doubt, and preventing them from falling into the chaotic blackness of irreligious unbelief, by wisely, lovingly, and intelligently presenting before them the truths of the Lord's New Dispensation. In order to do this effectively, it is necessary that they should make themselves acquainted with the philosophic and scientific principles that are at work in the mind of thoughtful modern society. Many scientific minds in the present age not knowing how to reconcile the doctrines of the old church with the teachings of science, adopt—many of them even unconsciously—the doctrines of the positive philosophy, and preach them from their pulpits; whilst the semi-scientific among the intelligent laity are being influenced by these doctrines, and know not from whence they have sprung, nor the spiritual character of the man that originated the system; and after they have once imbibed the spirit of positivism, they soon find themselves in a state of complete negation as regards both natural and revealed religion. We think it especially incumbent upon New Church teachers to inform themselves regarding the teachings of the positive philosophy, to enable them to adapt New Church truth to the intellectual condition and spiritual wants of the age; for it appears to us that that part of the mission of the New Church which consists in pointing out the fallacies of the old church doctrine, is nearly at an end, and they have now to enter upon another field of spiritual warfare against the erring spirit of the children of old church error; and one, not the weakest of them, is the anti-religious and negative teachings of the philosophy of positivism. H. C.