day. My
argument, also, turns upon this very point of the limits of
philosophical inquiry; and I cannot bring out my own views better than
by contrasting them with those so plainly and, in the main, fairly
stated by the Archbishop of York.

But I may be permitted to make a preliminary comment upon an occurrence
that greatly astonished me. Applying the name of the "New Philosophy" to
that estimate of the limits of philosophical inquiry which I, in common
with many other men of science, hold to be just, the Archbishop opens
his address by identifying this "New Philosophy" with the Positive
Philosophy of M. Comte (of whom he speaks as its "founder"); and then
proceeds to attack that philosopher and his doctrines vigorously.

Now, so far as I am concerned, the most reverend prelate might
dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I should not
attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what specially
characterises the Positive Philosophy has led me, I find therein little
or nothing of any scientific value, and a great deal which is as
thoroughly antagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in
ultramontane Catholicism. In fact, M. Comte's philosophy, in practice,
might be compendiously described as Catholicism _minus_ Christianity.

But what has Comtism to do with the "New Philosophy," as the Archbishop,
defines it in the following passage?

"Let me briefly remind you of the leading principles of this new
philosophy.

"All knowledge is experience of facts acquired by the senses. The
traditions of older philosophies have obscured our experience by
mixing with it much that the senses cannot observe, and until these
additions are discarded our knowledge is impure. Thus metaphysics
tell us that one fact which we observe is a cause, and another is
the effect of that cause; but, upon a rigid analysis, we find that
our senses observe nothing of cause or effect: they observe, first,
that one fact succeeds another, and, after some opportunity, that
this fact has never failed to follow--that for cause and effect we
should substitute invariable succession. An older philosophy
teaches us to define an object by distinguishing its essential from
its accidental qualities: but experience knows nothing of essential
and accidental; she sees only that, certain marks attach to an
object, and, after many observations, that som