258 PART L— THEOLOGY. [Ch. ni — Anti-Theism.
There has been no such development of the race, and there is no such development of the individual man, as the argument supposes. Much less is it true, as Comte maintains, that these several meth- ods of dealing with phenomena are antagonistic and mutually ex- clusive ; that if we believe in spiritual agents, we cannot believe in unseen, metaphysical causes; and that if we believe in the latter we cannot believe in the former. The fact is, the great mass of man- kind, educated and uneducated, believe in both. They believe in God and mind, as well as in occult causes, such as electricity, magnetism, and other physical forces ; which, in Comte' s sense of the word, are metaphysical. •
With regard to this assumed law of progress. Prof. Huxley, who is as completely emancipated from the trammels of authority as any man of science now living, says, in the first place, that Comte contradicts himself as to this fundamental principle. In proof he quotes along passage from the " Philosophic Positive," in which Comte teaches, — "(^.) As a matter of fact, the human intellect has not been invariably subjected to the law of tlie three states, and, therefore, the necessity of the law cannot be demonstrable d priori. (6.) Much of our knowledge of all kinds has not passed through the three states, and more particularly, as M. Comte is careful to point out, not through the first, (c.) The positive state has more or less coexisted with the theological, from the dawn of human intel- ligence. And, by way of completing the series of contradictions, the assertion that the three states are ' essentially different and even radically opposed,' is met a little lower on the same page by the declaration that ' the metaphysical state is, at bottom, nothing but a simple general modification of the first.' " " Men of science," he adds, " are not in the habit of paying much attention to ' laws ' stated in this fashion." ^
After showing that the individual man does not pass through these several states. Prof. Huxley says, " What is true of the indi- vidual is, mutatis mutandis, true of the intellectual development of the species. It is absurd to say of men in a state of primitive savagery, that all their conceptions are in a theological state. Nine tenths of them are eminently realistic, and as ' positive ' as igno- rance and narrowness can make them." ^
Besides, it is not true that the race of men now existing on the earth, were in their primitive state fetich-worshippers, or that they
1 Lay Sermons, pp. 174, 175.
2 Huxle}''s Lay Sermons, Addresses, etc., London, 1870, No. VIII. " The Scientific Aspects of Positivism," p. 178.