It will readily lie recognised that Positivism, as SO
understood, revives under strangely modernized aspects the old dogma of Protagoras thai man is the measure of the universe. The ancient contrast and analogyof rocosm and the microcosm are reproduced in quaint disguise and more plausible form by limiting the intelligible universe (mundus intelligibilis) to its reflec- tion from the mirror of the human mind so far, an 1
bo far only, as an image of it can be formed through the instrumentality of the bodily Benses and of rea- soning on lb. phenomena observed thereby. We will not be tempted into the easy misrepresentation of alleging that all is denied which is not so reflected, bul the practical effect is nearly the same; for it is ig- nored, cashiered, and extruded from the field of specula- tion. Thus, tin universe and all its marvels, the mind
of man and its measun li pot m ii . I he lean of man with its boundless duties, iis multitudinous aspirations and its unfathomable mysteries, are shrivelled up into
the narrow dimensions of the science of the day. Sure- ly we require a philosophy of the unknown as well as of t he known !
"Vere -ire est scire per causas," said Aristotle, and the schoolmen after him. The maxim was unqui stion- ably pressed by the latter to hazardous uses, and em- ployed to authenticate hallucinations which obstructed science for centuriea "Ven scire est scire apparentias" - true knowledge is the knowledge of appearances — is the shibboleth ol the Positivists, and is even more dan- gerous than the misapprehension which it has under- taken to dethrone. Ii results in pure phenomenalism, and renders man and the universe alike hollow, decep- tive, and spectral. This tendency of Positivism, and the length to which it may be and has been carried, are well illustrated by the remarkable and exquisitely writ- ten article of .Mr. Frederic Harrison on Th Soul and Futurt Life, from which we have already made a cita- tion, and by the very recent discussions provoki 1 by it. Mr. Harrison, like his Coryphaeus, will not endure "thoughts that wander through eternity." except it be a human eternity. He will uol suffer them to travel ••extra tlammantia moenia mundi." He con those flaming walls to the limits of the earth's horizon. lie do. s not deny the exist, nee of the human soul : he only starves ii out and dissipates it into a technical ab- straction. "The combined activity of the human pow- ers," he says, "organized around the highest of tin m we .all the soul." Again,"the consensus of human facul- ties, which we call the soul, comprises all sides of human nature according to one homogeneous theory."
" She, mouldering with the dull earths mouldering sod,
Inwrapt tenfold in slothful shame, Lay there, exiled from eternal God, Lost to her place and name."
The future life is still more vacant, unreal, and inap- prehensible than even the sublimated soul. It is in- deed the shadow of a shade. Mr. Harrison give such distinct utterance to his conception of the post-mortem existence as to enable us to grasp it firmly. He employs phrases which indicate his acceptance ol the Panhumanistic immortality, by absorption into the aggregate humanity of subsequent generations, if he refuses to adore with Comte A Nouveau Grand-Etre — the New Supreme God humanity itself. But the abstract term— the unsubstantial and unessential conception of humanity — does not become a more real being — a more capable receptacle of souls or extinct consensuses ol hu- man powers b\ being stripped of the tawdry trappings
and tinsel fringes with which Comic had decorated it.
to set it upas an idol ill place of Jehovah. Strange that the Positivists should reject as unphilosophical and invalid all that religion teaches and our instincts acct pi as true, and should recur to such a factitious and ficti- tious abstraction as this humanity must be! Waiving the divine attributes of creation, ordination, and gov- ernmeni. and regarding only the functions of the Divin- n v as a m.ial intlu. n. . . \. it. d ov er men — as " the re- warder of them thai diligently seek him" it may well be asked what restraint or cue agemenl could a de- ified and posthumous humanity exercise retrospectively on the conduct of men in society or as individuals. The fancy i- a~ futile as it i- absurd. Roche Boyle's comic exclamation would recur to every transgn ssoi " \\ hat
has postei il v done for its !"
It may be frankly conceded that the ideas of duty, of obligation, ol justice, of temporal responsibility— per- haps even ol right and w ion-, oi righteousness and sin, of beautj and of aesthetic emotion maybe translated from the language of religious belief into the language of Positivism. M. Comte made a travesty of the rites and ceremonial of t latholic < Christianity, and commend- ed it to his devotees as the Positive religion. This in- vention has bei n abnegated, in form at least, by his fol- low, re, but ii is a similar procedure by which Mr. Har- rison and the r. -I profess and hope to retain the essen- tial characteristics of a divine creed, after excluding
POSITIVISM
439
POSITIVISM
from the universe all recognition of divinity. It is mis- taking the shell for the organism, after the substance and life, which were enclosed by the shell, and which informed the shell, have perished out. We can see the very nice distinction demanded by Positivism between the absolute negation of the divine and the supernat- ural and the mere declaration of its incognizability, and of its consequent elimination from the domain of faith, as of knowledge. But the practical effect in both cases will be nearly the same. The discrimination is very refined and theoretical, and may be perfectly valid in abstract reasoning. But it is only the purest and most intellectual natures which can perceive it and act upon it. and even they will forget it or lose their hold upon it in moments of passion and temptation. It cannot be adequately apprehended by dull minds, coarse temper- aments, and undisciplined characters, and will conse- quently be wholly inoperative where most required. The defect— the fatal defect— is the absence of any im- perative and extrinsic authority to secure effective re- sponsibility and obedience to right. The injury to hu- manity thus portended is very evident : the advantage to be anticipated is indiscernible.