rich as agents appointed by a Divine Providence to distribute their wealth among the poor in coals, food, clothing, cottages, anything they might reasonably require. He had no socialistic envy of their high estate; on the contrary he looked up to them as superior beings, who were as much bound to look after the welfare of their inferiors as the soil was in due season bound to produce a harvest; tillage and suitable service never entering his mind nor disturbing his conclusions. He lived alone and had no equals; the rich, from nobles to farmers, were all gentry and far above him: but all labourers he in turn considered far beneath him, calling them lowns, clowns, hinds, louts, morts, peasants, rustics, and vulgar, rarely mentioning them without scorn and aversion. On the other hand, if he was essentially a beggar, he had much of the poet's nature in his extreme sensitiveness to abuse, which infirmity was exercised with cruel frequency by his much-hated lowns, and bitterly resented by him in verse. The pain he felt at this gross injustice may be contrasted with the comparative mildness of his repinings over physical suffering-('I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness') when his reflections scarcely swell into any more fervid strain than wonder that the gentry do not press eagerly forward to relieve him of all his troubles! The bright poetical warmth of his constitution is shown in the ease with which he passes from the dreary aspect of the country, under snow-storms and thunder storms, to his memories of the same scenes when smiling in the sunshine, and loaded with the wealth of spring or summer flowers, or blushing with rich autumnal fruit. But these beauties serve only as types or promises of another world where, freed from all anxieties, he hoped to behold them infinitely multiplied and breathing in eternal bloom. His sudden rebounds from anguish to hopefulness indicate the highly-strung elasticity of his organisation; and tough indeed it must have been to have borne him through almost unendurable hardships till they ended with his death at the age of seventy-nine. He was an oddity, who loved to muse and sing for his own pleasure, and tease others to support him, rather than work for others to support himself; but he owned this advantage over many of his betters, he was perfectly transparent and candid. We look into his mind and know his thoughts, his feelings, his hopes and terrors, with as much certainty as when looking into a mirror we know that we behold ourselves.

To the storm-battered lonely outcast the apostrophe of Cordelia forms a fitting epitaph:

And wast thou fain, poor father,

To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,

In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!

"Tis wonder, that thy life and wits at once
Had not concluded all.

THOMAS WOOLNER.

COMTE'S ATHEISM.

I CANNOT be otherwise than gratified by the fact that Mr. Frederic Harrison has seen fit to notice the paper on 'Comte's Three States' which appeared in the October number of this Review. It is true that he has treated me, especially in the opening of his article, with something approaching to sublime contempt; but there is a mixture of kindly feeling, for which I thank him, and, as for contempt, I could scarcely expect to put my foot within the precincts of Comte's philosophy for the purpose of questioning the truth of a fundamental principle without appearing to a genuine Comtist as rash, ill informed, and mistaken. But as I have no other end in view except the establishment of the truth, I am glad that Mr. Harrison's condemnation of my paper has not been confined to his own thoughts, but has been permitted to assume a palpable and legible form. He will not, however, be surprised to find that I have thought it necessary to write a few pages in reply.

But before I attempt to grapple with that which appears to me the central part of Mr. Harrison's criticism, I wish to make a remark or two upon a less prominent feature of the paper.

In the first place, I am apparently called to order for using Miss Martineau's translation of the Philosophie Positive. I did so because I understood the translation, or rather condensation, in English by Miss Martineau to have been accepted and authorised by Comte himself. In the publisher's announcement, prefixed to the second edition, we read as follows:

It is not for us to speak of the execution of this work, but we may fitly mention that it was so highly approved by the author himself that, in his annual issue of his catalogue of works sanctioned by him, he substituted Miss Martineau's version in the original. In consequence of this, her version has been, since his death, retranslated into French for the sake of its diffusion among the author's own countrymen.

This seems to be a sufficient warrant for accepting Miss Martineau's work as equivalent to the Philosophie Positive.

But it is curious that, immediately after reflecting upon me for studying Comte 'in a translation of one of his works,' Mr. Harrison should have quoted from that same translation the following passage:

During the whole of our survey of the sciences, I have endeavoured to keep in view the great fact that all the three states, theological, metaphysical, and positive, may and do exist at the same time in the same mind in regard to different sciences. I must once more recall this consideration, and insist upon it, because in the forgetfulness of it lies the only real objection that can be brought against the grand law of the three states. It must be steadily kept in view that the same mind may be in a positive state with regard to the most simple and general sciences, in the metaphysical with regard to the more complex and special, and in the theological with regard to social science, which is so complex and special as to have hitherto taken no scientific form at all.

It is curious, I say, that, immediately after reflecting upon my use of a translation, Mr. Harrison should have done the same thing; but it is still more curious that the words which are italicised, and for the sake of which the quotation is chiefly made, are not in the original. Here is the passage which is represented by Miss

Dès le début de ce traité, j'ai présenté cette hiérarchie fondamentale comme la suite naturelle et l'indispensable complément de ma loi des trois états. Néanmoins, il n'est pas inutile de la rappeler formellement ici, soit pour prévenir les seules objections spécieuses qu'une irrationnelle érudition scientifique pourrait inspirer contre la loi d'évolution que je viens d'établir directement, soit pour faire acquérir aux diverses vérifications spéciales toute leur portée logique, en les disposant ainsi de manière à s'éclairer et à se fortifier mutuellement. Sous le premier aspect, je puis affirmer n'avoir jamais trouvé d'argumentation sérieuse en opposition à cette loi, depuis dix-sept ans que j'ai eu le bonheur de la découvrir, si ce n'est celle que l'on fondait sur la considération de la simultanéité, jusqu'ici nécessairement très commune, des trois philosophies chez les mêmes intelligences.

Mr. Harrison may perhaps say that the passage which he has quoted contains in a condensed form all that is to be found in a more diffused shape in the original. It may be so, but the use of italics in such circumstances is somewhat strange and unusual, especially in connection with the rebuke just administered.

But let me pass to a more substantial point. Mr. Harrison speaks of what I should have found if I had pursued my study of Comte a little beyond the opening pages of a translation of one of his works. If Mr. Harrison means to accuse me of not having read all that Comte ever wrote, I plead guilty at once. But if he charges me with rushing without thought and consideration upon a discussion of the theory of the three states, he does me wrong. The fact is that I have long thought upon this subject, and tried to get my mind in a clear state with regard to it. I have endeavoured in this as in other cases to act upon that quaint but really valuable epigrammatic advice of Coleridge: 'If you do not understand an author's ignorance, suppose yourself to be ignorant of his understanding.' I have felt sure that there must be some kind of truth in Comte's dictum, and yet have felt almost as sure that it could not be the great truth which he believed it to be; and it was in the course of

reflection upon the mysterious subject of creation, with reference to the mode of treatment of that subject adopted in a little book which I published about a year ago, that the light seemed to dawn upon me. I came to the conclusion that as a general rule subjects of human knowledge can be studied from three points of views-theological, philosophical, scientific; that these points of view are not necessarily mutually destructive; that they may coexist and help or explain each other. This conclusion seemed to me to throw a light upon Comte, and to indicate the nature of the truth which his dictum has in my judgment distorted, exaggerated, and virtually changed into an untruth. The result was that I determined to put my notions concerning Comte's famous dictum into the form of an essay, which I thought might be useful, and for which I may add I have received several hearty expressions of thanks.

But I venture to vindicate my right to criticise Comte's dictum of the three states without having read all that he has written, upon a very plain and intelligible ground. A fundamental proposition laid down by an author in the forefront of his works, as a great discovery upon which as a foundation all his system is to stand, ought to be capable of being examined and criticised in its own light. Newton begins his Principia with certain lemmas, which used to be when I was a Cambridge student, and perhaps are now, almost the only portion of the Principia regarded as of obligation in the Cambridge course; it was rare to find a man (I mean a young man) who had pursued his study of Newton beyond the opening pages of a translation of one of his works. Nevertheless, the doctrine of prime and ultimate ratios was a doctrine which the student could understand and appreciate without following Newton into all his subsequent investigations. If Comte's doctrine of the three states be as sound as Newton's doctrine of prime and ultimate ratios, it will stand in like manner upon its own feet.

But I pass from these preliminary remarks to consider more particularly Mr. Harrison's criticism. His complaint in general is that my paper is a typical example of what logicians call Ignoratio Elenchi, that is proving or disproving something which it may be proper and possible to prove or disprove, but which is not the thing which your adversary has said. The complaint against me is not that my conclusions are wrong, but that those conclusions are not such as even Comte himself need have denied in order to save his own doctrine. I have, in fact, misapprehended Comte's meaning, and this in two principal ways.

I. I am said to understand the theological' state to mean a belief in a Creator; the 'metaphysical' state to mean general philosophy; and the 'positive' state to mean the denial of creation, or atheism.

II. I assume Comte to have said that men, or a generation of men, are necessarily at any given time in one or other of the three

states exclusively, passing per saltum, and as a whole, from one to the other; and that one mind cannot combine any two states.

Upon each of these indictments I have something to say.

I. With regard to the meaning to be assigned to the three fundamental adjectives, theological, metaphysical, positive, the first is by far the most important, and that which determines the amount of importance to be attached to the other two. Metaphysical is a term concerning the meaning of which I should deem it unnecessary to argue; and positive being, so far as I know, Comte's own word, as applied to philosophy, he may have a right to assign to it any meaning that he pleases within his own system. But theological is a very solemn and far-reaching word, which no one has a right to trifle with, and to which arbitrary meanings ought not to be assigned. Hence I think that we have just cause of complaint that when Comte introduces the word for the first time he makes it synonymous with fictitious-L'état théologique, ou fictif. It may be said that, whether this use of the term be justifiable or not, it is at all events manifest that theological, in Comte's sense, means simply fabulous or fictitious, and does not imply belief in a Creator. No-does not imply this belief; but does it include it? Is belief in a Creator comprised in the same category as Fetichism, or not? Let us look at Comte's own words.

Le système théologique est parvenu à la plus haute perfection dont il soit susceptible, quand il a substitué l'action providentielle d'un étre unique au jeu varié des nombreuses divinités indépendantes qui avaient été imaginées primitivement. De même, le dernier terme du système métaphysique consiste à concevoir, au lieu des différentes entités particulières, une seule grande entité générale, la nature envisagée comme la source unique de tous les phénomènes. Pareillement, la perfection du système positif, vers laquelle il tend sans cesse, quoiqu'il soit très probable qu'il ne doive jamais l'atteindre, serait de pouvoir se représenter tous les divers phénomènes observables comme des cas particuliers d'un seul fait général, tel que celui de la gravitation, par exemple.

Now this language seems to be sufficiently plain. Theological, according to Comte, includes polytheism-'the numerous independent divinities which had been imagined in primitive times'—and it may be supposed, therefore, to include the rudest and basest conceptions of supernatural action; but it is not confined to these-the term still holds where the conception of the providential action of one supreme being has been substituted for all inferior conceptions. Doubtless it ought to do so; the only question would be whether we are justified in using the term of any lower conception of the divine nature; but observe, for this is the point, that Comte does distinctly include within the term 'theological' the conception of the providential action of the One God; and therefore, though it may be true that in a certain sense Comte does not mean by theological' a belief in a Creator, it is equally true that Comte does include that belief within the meaning of the word.