CHAPTER I. THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. In the first part of this work, we made reference to that modern school of infidelity which holds of pantheism; and, in succeeding portions, we have mainly endeavored to combat its views and tendencies. But there is another school of infidelity, to which we have but alluded in passing, and which, whether from the magnitude of its pretensions, the talent of its disciples, or the appalling completeness of its results, deserves consideration. We mean the school of Auguste Comté, the far-famed Positive Philosophy. To it we devote the present chapter. We found the essential characteristic of modern pantheism to be an assertion of the divinity of man. Somewhat of study and reflection was necessary to assure us of this. But in the case of the Positive Philosophy there is no such labor necessary it wears its distinctive dogma written on its brow. The ancient Jewish high-priest wore on his forehead, as a sign before which armies and emperors should bow down, the mystic name of Jehovah: this philosophy bears as its badge the ex press and conclusive legend, There is no God. We have said that we had, in the preceding pages, but alluded to the atheistic science of Comté. Though not, however, naming either him or his philosophy, we have already, we have no hesitation in asserting, come into the neighborhood of both. We have known them in their prototypes. For M. Comté, we had the Baron D'Holbach; for the Positive Philosophy, the System of Nature. We institute no individual comparison between D'Holbach and Comté; we should think it beyond doubt that the latter was by far the abler man; but, in their respective systems, no one, we think, can fail to perceive an essential similarity, beneath a partial and superficial difference. The point from which they start is the same; the goal at which they arrive is one; their general method is identical. The axiom from which they set out is, that nothing is to be believed save what is seen, heard, handled; the common goal is atheism; the method is that of physical science. The advance of knowledge has occasioned considerable change in the general aspect and finish of the edifice of scientific atheism; what D'Holbach conceived to be an exhibition of the physical origin of life, has proved to be a childish mistake; a great deal, probably, of sentimental foolery, about suicide and the like, has been, as faded drapery, put aside; the walls have been newly overlaid with scientific mortar, tempered by modern enlightenment; the whole has been refitted, according to the most improved modern methods, with an utter regardlessness to expense. But the very fact of these recent amendments and repairs might have suggested that it was the old house, freshly swept and garnished, in which a new crew had come to habit. The universal appearance and proclamation of system-the endless ranges of pillars, the countless museumcases, the perpetual diagrams, the reiterated profession of power to explain all things and annihilate wonder-might have led us to suspect that the spirit of D'Holbach (if it is not an insult to the man to suppose he had a spirit) reigned within. The original axiom of the Positive Philosophy is, that the immaterial éxists not, that sense is the sole source of evidence. Alleging that man can not prove the existence of a Divine Being, or of a spirit, refusing to believe aught which can not be defined in language and precisely comprehended in thought, its advocates prefer the alternative of utterly denying the existence of an invisible world, and a system of spiritual relations connecting man therewith, to that of accepting instinct, listening to faith, or bowing to revelation. : It might be interesting to trace, in a few departments, the mode in which this philosophy would take practical manifestation. We are unable here to do more than indicate the method in which the reader may work out a whole scheme of its operation. Its general effect would be to circumscribe every province of affairs to cabin, crib, confine the spirit of social life: to limit advancement to one path, to turn the eye of man to earth, to pronounce those mighty hopes which have been said to make us men, mere toys of the nursery. If it retained the word duty, it would restrict its operation entirely to that between man and man; duty would become synonymous with interest, and conscience with calculation; the decalogue would be a series of arithmetical conclusions. There would be a great enumeration of motives; but they would all have one characteristic; they would hint of their father's house by always whispering the word system. They would be cut and squared, weighed and measured, committed to memory and carefully remembered; they would never kindle the eye or flush the cheek, they would have none of that inspiring indefi niteness, of that animating suggestion of something infinite, which has ever roused and supported men; they would all be known, ticketed, and brought out for use, as methodically as a gardener's tools or a grocer's measures: for this is the science that knows, and sees, and annihilates alike the weakness of en |