ere wholly within the
law.

Nothing can present a greater contrast to all this than the history of
the Postivists. This sect arose much about the same time as that of
the Mormons, in the upper and most instructed stratum of the
quick-witted, sceptical population of Paris. The founder, Auguste
Comte, was a teacher of mathematics, but of no eminence in that
department of knowledge, and with nothing but an amateur's
acquaintance with physical, chemical, and biological science. His
works are repulsive, on account of the dull diffuseness of their
style, and a certain air, as of a superior person, which characterises
them; but nevertheless they contain good things here and there. It
would take too much space to reproduce in detail a system which
proposes to regulate all human life by the promulgation of a Gentile
Leviticus. Suffice it to say, that M. Comte may be described as a
syncretic, who, like the Gnostics of early Church history, attempted
to combine the substance of imperfectly comprehended contemporary
science with the form of Roman Christianity. It may be that this is
the reason why his disciples were so very angry with some obscure
people called Agnostics, whose views, if we may judge by the account
left in the works of a great Positivist controversial writer, were
very absurd.

To put the matter briefly, M. Comte, finding Christianity and Science
at daggers drawn, seems to have said to Science, "You find
Christianity rotten at the core, do you? Well, I will scoop out the
inside of it." And to Romanism: "You find Science mere dry light--cold
and bare. Well, I will put your shell over it, and so, as schoolboys
make a spectre out of a turnip and a tallow candle, behold the new
religion of Humanity complete!"

Unfortunately neither the Romanists, nor the people who were something
more than amateurs in science, could be got to worship M. Comte's new
idol properly. In the native country of Positivism, one distinguished
man of letters and one of science, for a time, helped to make up a
roomful of the faithful, but their love soon grew cold. In England, on
the other hand, there appears to be little doubt that, in the ninth
decade of the century, the multitude of disciples reached the grand
total of several score. They had the advantage of the advocacy of one
or two most eloquent and learned apostles, and, at any rate, the
sympathy of several persons of light and leading; and, if they were
not seen, they were heard, al