old cherished convictions in theology, metaphysics, and heaven (to speak anti-positively) knows what. It is called by Mr. Morell, an enormous system of materialism, grounded on great research—rejecting all causes as useless and vain—making the idea of power the lingering relic of an age of hypothesis; that of mind or spirit but a continuous attempt to personify the law of man's intellectual being; and that of God, when viewed thelogically, a fruitless attempt to account for the existence of the universe,—when viewed philosophically, but the highest abstraction of causality, which must give way in this age of positive science to the simple idea of a general law.
Is, then, M. Comte an atheist? So affirm "the general." While some "positively" call him very religious, and his system the only truly religious science. What says Mr. Lewes to the imputation of atheism? Most "positively" he denies it. An incautious reader, he allows, dipping here and there into M. Comte's deep places, might suppose him an atheist—but an attentive reader must, on the contrary, be "strongly impressed by the forcible and scornful rejection of atheism so often there recurring." And Mr. Lewes quotes a passage to show that Comte regards atheism as the dregs of the metaphysical period, a period for which his scorn is incessant. But does that passage, does any passage in the maestro's opera ominia, imply any regard less scornful for theism? Is not the idea of a God[1] as obnoxious to him, as the logical disproof of One—both schemes being equally removed from positive science, and by it scouted as futile waste of time, and mischievous waste of brains? Atheist may be a hard name in our terminology; in Mr. Comte's, it is only an unmeaning one, and one not worth the pains of earning. Theism is not "positive" enough. Atheism is a great deal too negative. In short, the whole subject had better be dropped—it pertains to the two first phases of progress, the theological and metaphysical, and they are presumed to be "shelved" for ever and a day.
With reference, however, to Mr. Lewes, we are not at liberty to overlook his protest against the charge of atheism; nor should we omit to mention his earnestly enforced and consistently iterated tenet, that "the Intellectual aspect is not the noblest aspect of man," and that never will there be a Philosophy capable of satisfying the demands of Humanity, until the truth be recognised that "man is moved by his emotions, not by his ideas; using his Intellect only as an eye to see the way"—his Intellect being, in a word, the servant, not the lord of the Heart,—and Science a dull bagatelle, "unless it subserve some grand religious aim—unless its issue be in some enlarged conception of man's life and destiny." He hesitates not to declare his preference of the primitive spontaneous conceptions of the Deity to the modern deification of Intellect, which is but a part, and that not the noblest part, of our nature. There is genuine heart in most of what Mr. Lewes indites, which is scarcely true, so far as we can judge, of the discussions of his "guide, philosopher, and
- ↑ The only Etre Supreme considered possible by M. Comte is—what? "The Collective Life of Humanity." Venite exultemus!
volumes. The circulation of Mr. Lewes's epitome, and of Miss Martineau's ampler performance (in John Chapman's Series), will be some criterion of the interest England takes in positivism. Is the game to be, Follow the Leader?
