himself was not a cause; that it could not be fairly concluded that he was the efficient and intelligent author of the books which he took credit to himself for having written; that the apparent evidences of mind in these works were deceptive, and did not warrant the reference of them to mind as their cause. The only reasons which he advanced against the theistic conclusion should have led him straight to suspense of judgment respecting the causation involved in the production of his own works. They were as good grounds for declaring illusory the evidence for his own existence as for disregarding the evidence for God's existence, although, of course, extremely insufficient grounds for doing either the one or the other. If from the combination of letters in a book we can legitimately rise to the mind of the author as at least one of the causes of its existence, a knowledge of causes, in the only sense in which a theist is interested in maintaining that they can be known, is clearly not inaccessible to the human intellect, but within its easy reach. If, on the other hand, positivists are justified in asserting that causes are absolutely unknowable, let them not expect us to believe that they themselves are the authors of books and speeches; that their invisible thoughts and volitions have originated printed and audible words. If a human mind can reveal itself as in a certain sense a cause through paper and printer's

ink, it is utterly arbitrary to deny that the Divine mind may reveal itself as in the same sense a cause through the arrangements and forms of the material universe.

All the reasonings of positivists against causes resolve themselves at last into the single argument -We cannot see causality, and therefore we cannot know causes; our senses show us succession but not causation, antecedents and consequents but not causes and effects; and we know nothing, and have no right to believe anything, beyond what our senses show us. In other words, their entire argumentation proceeds on a superficial hypothesis as to the nature of knowledge-one which fails to note that the mind itself is the most important factor in knowledge, and that the simplest and directest experience presupposes a constitution in thought as well as in things. Causes are inferred. to be metaphysical fictions because sensation is assumed to be the sole means of knowledge, the only true ground of belief, and the complete measure of existence. But these assumptions are crude and unfounded dogmas. To those who believe that there is no such state as mere sensation— that thought and belief must always go beyond sensation-that the idea of cause is a necessary condition of intellectual activity-and that phenomena can only be apprehended and conceived of by the help of this idea, the reasoning of the

positivist must seem a manifest begging of the question.

When treating last year of the design argument, I examined all the objections of Comte against final causes which seemed to me possessed of any plausibility. On this point, therefore, I shall merely remark now, that if, as he maintained, we can know nothing of final causes, nothing of the purposes which things are meant to accomplish, the arguments by which he attempted to show that they might have realised their final causes, fulfilled their purposes, better than they do, ought in selfconsistency never to have been used. If we can have no notion of the purpose of a thing, we cannot judge whether it is fulfilling its purpose or not, whether it is fulfilling it well or ill. Comte's unqualified denial of the possibility of knowing the ends of things is glaringly inconsistent with his attempts to prove that things might have been constituted and arranged in a happier and more advantageous manner. For a man who avows complete ignorance of the purposes of things to try to show that they are not fulfilling their purposes, or might fulfil them more successfully, is the most suicidal, self-contradictory undertaking imaginable. It shows that he himself finds it impossible really to believe what he rashly affirms. It shows that in spite of his theory the belief in final causes is so rooted in his intellectual

nature that he assumes it even when reasoning against it.

II.

Were positivism established as a philosophy, no room would be left for religion in the ordinary sense of the term. If the mind can know nothing except the phenomena of immediate experience, if sensations and feelings be the matter of all its thoughts, if God be wholly beyond its cognisance, it is inevitably condemned to confine its beliefs, anticipations, fears, and joys, to this visible and temporal scene of things. This being the case, how can there be any religion? Till comparatively late in his career, Comte did not suppose there could be any, and did not feel the want of any. He considered "religiosity," as he called it, "a mere weakness, and avowal of want of power." But in the latter part of his life he passed through certain experiences which convinced him that the heart was as essential a part of humanity as the head; that the spirit required to be satisfied as well as the intellect. He felt in himself wants which mere science could not supply, and recognised, in consequence, that the human race could not dispense with a religion. With characteristic boldness he proceeded to invent what he was pleased to designate a religion. This so-called

religion has not as yet obtained many adherents, and does not appear as if it would be more successful in the future, although its founder felt no doubt that it would speedily supersede all former faiths. Few of those who are positivists in philosophy are also positivists in religion. As a rule, positivists have no religion. And in this, I think, they are quite consistent.

M. Comte laid the basis of his proposed religious reformation in a radical alteration of the signification of the word religion. Religion had been previously always understood to imply belief in a God-to rest on some affirmation of the supernatural. M. Comte wished to present as a religion a theory of life which involved no belief in a God—no affirmation of the supernatural. He gained his end simply enough by employing the word religion in a peculiar sense. But, of course, there was and could be no justification of this procedure. The human race has rights in such a term as religion which are not to be sacrificed to the will of any individual. The business of a thinker dealing with this and similar words is, to ascertain what they have hitherto meant and what they actually mean, and to apply them as other men have done and do; for him to impose a signification of his own upon them is alike an arbitrary and an arrogant act, and one which tends to generate confusion and error. A religion which is