gradually rose to polytheism and monotheism. The reverse is true. Not only revelation, but all history and tradition, go to show that the primitive state of our race was its highest state, at least so far as religion is concerned. Monotheism was the earliest form of religion among men. To that succeeded nature-worship and pantheism, and to that polytheism. It is a historical fact that monotheism was not reached by a process of development. Mono- theism was first ; it gradually perished from among men, except as miraculously preserved among the Hebrews, and from them diffused through the medium of, or rather, in the form of, Christianity. It extends nowhere beyond the influence, direct or indii-ect, of the supernatural revelation contained in the Bible. This is a fact which scientific men should not overlook in their deductions.
3. Comte was guilty of the unfairness of confining his survey to a small portion of the nations of the earth ; and that the portion too which had been brought under the influence of Christianity. If the law which he sought to establish be universal and necessary, it must have operated from the beginning in India and China as well as in Europe. The millions of those regions have not reached the monotheistic, much less the metaphysical, and still less the positive stage of development. India especially furnishes a striking refutation of this theory. The Hindus are a highly intellectual race. Their language and literature are on a par with those of Greece and Rome. Their philosophers, nearly three thousand years ago, anticipated the highest results reached by the Schellings and Kegels of our day. Yet of all the nations of the earth the Hindus are the least materialistic, or positive, in their views of nature. With them the supernatural or spiritual is alone real. The Hindus, therefore, cannot be subject to that universal and necessary law of development which is assumed as the foundation of the Positive Philosophy.
4. It is of course presumptuous and idle to attempt to reason men out of their senses, or to convince them that what their very nature teaches them is time, is utterly false and untrustworthy. This, however, Comte not only attempts, but his whole system is founded on the assumption that our nature is a delusion and a lie. That is, it is founded on the assumption that intuitive truths are false. It is intuitively true that we are free agents. This Comte denies. It is intuitively true that there is a specific and essential difference between right and wrong. This is denied. It is intu- itively true that every effect has an efficient cause. This too is denied. It is intuitively true that there is a God to whom men
260 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. IH. — Axti-Theism.
are responsible for their character and conduct. This also is denied. Had all the intellect and all the knowledge ever possessed bv men and angels been concentrated in the person of Comte, it had still been folly in him to attempt to found a system involving the denial of such truths as these. The Christian is not afraid to say one thing more. It is intuitively true, to all who have eyes to see, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that his gospel is the wisdom of God and the po-sver of God unto salvation, and that it is absolutely im- possible that any theory which is opposed to these divine intuitions can be true.
Another illustration of the presumptuous character of this phi- losophy is found in what it teaches concerning Sociology. Scientific men of all countries have lohg been laboriously engaged in making meteorological observations, and yet such are the number and com- plexity of the causes which determine the state of the weather, that no man is able to predict how the wind will blow forty-eight hours, much less, a year, in advance. The causes which determine human action in the individual and in society, are far more com- plex and inscrutable than those which determine the state of th» weather. Yet Comte assumes to have reduced Sociology to j science, vying with mathematics in certainty. " I will venture tc say," is his confident assertion, " that Sociological science, though only established by this book, already rivals mathematical science itself, not in precision and fecundity, but in positivity and ration- ality."!
Practical Apjjlications of Positivism.
The practical applications of this philosophy are very serious. Positivism claims the right of absolute and universal control over all human affi^irs ; over education, politics, social organization, and religion. As the progress of science has banished all liberty of opinion or of action from the departments of mathematics and astron- omy, so it must banish it from every other department of human thought and activity. Speaking of liberty of conscience, Comte says : " Negative as we now see this dogma to be, signifying re- lease from old authority, while waiting for the necessity of positive science, the absolute character supposed to reside in it gave it
energy to fulfil its revolutionary destination This dogma
can never be an organic principle ; and, moreover, it constitutes an obstacle to reorganization, now that its activity is no longer ab- sorbed by the demolition of the old political order Can it
be supposed," he asks, " that the most important and the most deli-
1 PMlosophie Positive, vol. ii. p. 516.