nothing else that we see, offers certain remedies-remedies not immediate, but certain in their operation and results. Positivism has this character of certainty because it is relative, organic, and precise. Its methods are scientific. It deals with the known, and the known only, and that in knowable ways. It uses the experience of Humanity, and guides itself solely by it. It meets all real human wants, individual and collective; while it sanctions and enforces a moral discipline, the need of which man constantly feels.

After claiming so much, it will not astonish you to hear that Positivism is Useful. That is its chief value. There are other systems of thought and life elaborated by human ingenuity which are of no use. They will not work. They have been tried, but there is no go in them. They have a certain attractiveness-some of them-as Utopias; but the attractiveness of usefulness they have not. They were constructed more for ornament than use. They were formed for a world which is not our world, a mankind which is not our mankind, and conditions of being of which we know little or nothing. From Plato downwards, to Fourier and St. Simon, have these systems been invented, and a comparison of them makes one ask whether the earlier are not less irrational than the later. Perhaps, of available material, Plato's offers most. His system has this merit over Fourier's, that it is artistically conceived and executed, and it can be understood. Both are revolutionary Utopias. However this may be, Positivism, having ascertained fully and accurately the laws of human growth and development, follows the teachings of history, and respects the facts of the human order. Its usefulness lies in its interpreting the present and future by the processes-social, moral, and mental-which have always been at work in the past of Humanity.

Positivism is useful under whatever aspect it may be regarded, for it records and methodises all past experience and knowledge, so that man may know how far he can and how far he cannot modify the External order in the interests of the human race. Theology favoured illusions with regard to that order, and led man to suppose (a useful illusion in its time) that it was more amenable to his influence than it actually was and is. So far did the illusion prevail that many men have been carried away with the opinion that that order was the best conceivable, whereas science is constantly showing, implicitly if not explicitly, how defec

tive it is, and in how many ways it may be improved. These are the uses of Positivism; it rids us of illusions; shows what is possible and impossible to man; bids him do the one, and bear the other; and to make his mind a mirror of the external order, so that he may see things as they actually are, and benefit by the knowledge.

The usefulness of Positivism brings us naturally to a consideration of its Reality; and it will not be necessary for us to dwell much upon this point, as this merit is constantly claimed for it in what has been already said. It was a remark of Mr. J. M. Ludlow, if I remember rightly, in one of the "Tracts for Priests and People," that, upon reading Comte's "Positive Philosophy," the student feels that he has never read a real book before. The reality of Positivism struck him as it strikes others. This reality has, indeed, been made its reproach. It has been said that Positivism is purely utilitarian and realistic; that for the longings of the human soul after moral perfection it has nothing to supply; and that its Philosophy is cold, hard, and mechanical. Of course, nothing can be more untrue than these charges, as students of Positivism know. But they have other work to do than to reply to them. Moreover, that is unnecessary, since scientists and savans pur sang charge Positivism with promoting spiritual fervours and mysticism. It is obvious that both these charges cannot be true, that the one excludes the other. If the opponents of Positivism are left alone, they destroy each other. Positivism is Real; Reality is stamped upon it everywhere. It deals with realities, not bugbears or figments. It is calculated to meet human wants of the widest, deepest, and most general character, of real men and real societies in a world the reality of which grows and greatens as man thinks and works in it. Spiritual fervours, too, Positivism has of the truest and most exalted nature; but mysticism is foreign, if not impossible, to it, as its Ideal is ever in subordination to the Real, and is, indeed, the Real transfigured.

All previous syntheses were Absolute in their character. Positivism, as has already been said, is Relative. It is of the nature of Theologism to be absolute, for reasons which will be obvious upon reflection. Theologism is based on Wills, whether innumerable Wills, as in Fetichism; many Wills, as in Polytheism; or one Will, as in Monotheism.. Will and Absolutism presuppose the existence of each other

Perhaps Monotheism was the most Absolute of all syntheses, as it is one Will incarnated. In Polytheism Zeus, Jove, and Indra were rulers of the gods, but not omnipotent rulers. Their power could be thwarted; their plans opposed, if not frustrated. This can be seen on referring to the mythologies of India and Greece, and, I was going to add, Rome; but she had no mythology until her contact with Greece, when she adapted one from Greece, or, rather, her poets did. With the death of Theologism the Absolute dies, and all those words of no meaning, such as the Infinite, the Unconditioned, the All (with a capital A), the Unknowable-et hoc genus omne. Science knows nothing of what is supposed to be conveyed by these words with a negative prefix. The words without the prefix symbolise something; and Positivism, which systematises Science, and forms a Philosophy of all the Sciences, knows nothing of Will or the Absolute, but confines itself to ascertaining the uniformities and resemblances observed in phenomena, which are called laws of nature. It is, therefore, a Relative synthesis only.

The domination of Absolute syntheses has naturally given rise to mental, moral, and physical phenomena being regarded from the Absolute point of view, and it has generated modes of thinking and acting which have come into greater and greater variance as experience ripened and knowledge was accumulated. The conflict of modern science is with the débris of these old beliefs, out of which all intellectual virtue has gone, and by which men no longer regulate their conduct. Absolutism is dying out in the Religious as it is dying out in the Political order; the coincidence is not a mere coincidence, but a relation between things. The belief in gods and the belief in kings flourish together and decay together. Many persons really regret, or affect to lament over, the decay of the old order; they might as well regret the waxing and waning of the seasons as they pass. The order is doomed with the absolute beliefs which rested upon it. What is to take its place? Another Absolute-the God of pure Theism, who started worlds into space, and regulates them only through laws, taking no note of man, his coming and going, absorbed in the contemplation of his own attributes and perfections? Or the Absolute of Pantheism, in which things vile and not vile, bad and good, virtuous and vicious, are all parts of a great whole, or rather jumble of contradictory things? But Science knows nothing of

either the God of the Theist or the God of the Pantheist. They are inaccessible to her, and she ignores them. She asks, and cogently, Why presuppose their existence? She does not want them, and can, indeed, do better without them. Her task is to explain, not invent; her sphere is the knowable, not the unknowable. She does not want to complicate the problem which is already so difficult to solve. Besides, these assumed beings or entities have no part or lot in her pursuits, and are really out of relation to her. Now, Positivism has to do with beings and events, and both the beings and events have relations, more or less clear, and defined with each other. But the beings are real beings. and the events real events. Neither are assumed. Assumptions-except scientific assumptions-are foreign to the genius of Positivism. Theological or Metaphysical assumptions she cannot away with-they are an abomination to her. She explains how, and in what soil, such assumptions arise; and this done, she passes on to her proper task to organise knowledge, so as to beautify and ennoble the life of man. Positivism is Relative. She formulates not only a sound method for acquiring knowledge, but she intimates what knowledge will and what knowledge will not prove beneficial to man. But on this point we shall have more to say later on.

Again, Positivism is Relative, inasmuch as it is a subjective synthesis; it is a subjective, not an objective, unity. There is no objective unity attainable, and yet so much is man influenced by the spirit of the old absolute synthesis that he endeavours to find one, or make one. Hence arises Specialism, which is the bane of Science, and that unfounded belief that all knowledge, qua knowledge, is useful

to man.

What do Scientists propose to themselves by their several studies? To learn all that can be known? The field of knowledge is almost infinite, and tens of thousands of generations must pass before it is half gone over. But suppose, for the sake of argument, the field could be gone over by the existing generation of Specialists: what good would result to Humanity? Suppose a knowledge of all facts attainable, is such a knowledge desirable? Are all facts equally valuable? Are all equally useful? Surely not! Is there no test of their worth, of their utility in a broad sense? Are there not thousands, it may be millions, of facts the knowledge of which would be useless to man?