My readers would hardly be interested were I to follow Mr. Congreve any further, or I might point out that the fact of his not having heard me lecture is hardly a safe ground for his speculations as to what I do not teach.  Nor do I feel called upon to give any opinion as to M. Comte’s merits or demerits as regards sociology.  Mr. Mill (whose competence to speak on these matters I suppose will not be questioned, even by Mr. Congreve) has dealt with M. Comte’s philosophy from this point of view, with a vigour and authority to which I cannot for a moment aspire; and with a severity, not unfrequently amounting to contempt, which I have not the wish, if I had the power, to surpass.  I, as a mere student in these questions, am content to abide by Mr. Mill’s judgment until some one shows cause for its reversal, and I decline to enter into a discussion which I have not provoked.

The sole obligation which lies upon me is to justify so much as still remains without justification of what I have written respecting Positivism—­namely, the opinion expressed in the following paragraph:—­

“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 any thing in ultramontane Catholicism.”

Here are two propositions:  the first, that the “Philosophie Positive” contains little or nothing of any scientific value; the second, that Comtism is, in spirit, anti-scientific.  I shall endeavour to bring forward ample evidence in support of both.

I. No one who possesses even a superficial acquaintance with physical science can read Comte’s “Lecons” without becoming aware that he was at once singularly devoid of real knowledge on these subjects, and singularly unlucky.  What is to be thought of the contemporary of Young and of Fresnel, who never misses an opportunity of casting scorn upon the hypothesis of an ether—­the fundamental basis not only of the undulatory theory of light, but of so much else in modern physics—­and whose contempt for the intellects of some of the strongest men of his generation was such, that he puts forward the mere existence of night as a refutation of the undulatory theory?[15] What a wonderful gauge of his own value as a scientific critic does he afford, by whom we are informed that phrenology is a great science, and psychology a chimaera; that Gall was one of the great men of his age, and that Cuvier was “brilliant but superficial"![16] How unlucky must one consider the bold speculator who, just before the dawn of modern histology—­which is simply the application of the microscope to anatomy—­reproves what he calls “the abuse of microscopic investigations,” and “the exaggerated credit” attached to them; who, when the morphological uniformity of the tissues of the great majority of plants and animals was on the eve of being demonstrated, treated with