him, Mr. Congreve’s remarks would apply:  but as I did neither of these things, they appear to me to be irrelevant, if not unjustifiable.  And even had it occurred to me to quote M. Comte’s expressions about Hume, I do not know that I should have cited them, inasmuch as, on his own showing, M. Comte occasionally speaks very decidedly touching writers of whose works he has not read a line.  Thus, in Tome VI. of the “Philosophie Positive,” p. 619, M. Comte writes:  “Le plus grand des metaphysiciens modernes, l’illustre Kant, a noblement merite une eternelle admiration en tentant, le premier, d’echapper directement a l’absolu philosophique par sa celebre conception de la double realite, a la fois objective et subjective, qui indique un si juste sentiment de la saine philosophie.”

But in the “Preface Personnelle” in the same volume, p. 35, M. Comte tells us:—­“Je n’ai jamais lu, en aucune langue, ni Vico, ni Kant, ni Herder, ni Hegel, &c.; je ne connais leurs divers ouvrages que d’apres quelques relations indirectes et certains extraits fort insuffisants.”

Who knows but that the “&c.” may include Hume?  And in that case what is the value of M. Comte’s praise of him?

[14] Now and always I quote the second edition, by Littre.

[15] “Philosophie Positive,” ii. p. 440.

[16] “Le brillant mais superficiel Cuvier.”—­Philosophie Positive, vi. p. 383.

[17] “Philosophie Positive,” iii. p. 369.

[18] Ibid. p. 387.

[19] Hear the late Dr. Whewell, who calls Comte “a shallow pretender,” so far as all the modern sciences, except astronomy, are concerned; and tells us that “his pretensions to discoveries are, as Sir John Herschel has shown, absurdly fallacious.”—­“Comte and Positivism,” Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1866.

[20] “Philosophie Positive,” i. pp. 8, 9.

[21] “Philosophie Positive,” iii. p. 188.

[22] The word “positive” is in every way objectionable.  In one sense it suggests that mental quality which was undoubtedly largely developed in M. Comte, but can best be dispensed with in a philosopher; in another, it is unfortunate in its application to a system which starts with enormous negations; in its third, and specially philosophical sense, as implying a system of thought which assumes nothing beyond the content of observed facts, it implies that which never did exist, and never will.

[23] “Philosophie Positive,” i. p. 56.

[24] “Philosophie Positive,” i. p. 99.

[25] Ibid., i. p. 77.

[26] “Philosophie Positive,” i. p. 78.

[27] Loc. cit., Preface Speciale, pp. i. ii.

[28] Mr. Congreve leaves out these important words, which show that I refer to the spirit, and not to the details of science.

IX.

ON A PIECE OF CHALK.

A LECTURE TO WORKING MEN.

If a well were to be sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as “chalk.”