to moral and political interests, their sole aim is to acquire an easy reputation, and in France (through paid Academies and professorships) personal lucre, by pushing their sciences into idle and useless inquiries (speculations oiseuses), of no value to the real interests of mankind, and tending to divert the thoughts from them.  One of the duties most incumbent on opinion and on the Spiritual Power, is to stigmatize as immoral, and effectually suppress, these useless employments of the speculative faculties.  All exercise of thought should be abstained from, which has not some beneficial tendency, some actual utility to mankind.  M. Comte, of course, is not the man to say that it must be a merely material utility.  If a speculation, though it has no doctrinal, has a logical value—­if it throws any light on universal Method—­it is still more deserving of cultivation than if its usefulness was merely practical:  but, either as method or as doctrine, it must bring forth fruits to Humanity, otherwise it is not only contemptible, but criminal.

That there is a portion of truth at the bottom of all this, we should be the last to deny.  No respect is due to any employment of the intellect which does not tend to the good of mankind.  It is precisely on a level with any idle amusement, and should be condemned as waste of time, if carried beyond the limit within which amusement is permissible.  And whoever devotes powers of thought which could render to Humanity services it urgently needs, to speculations and studies which it could dispense with, is liable to the discredit attaching to a well-grounded suspicion of caring little for Humanity.  But who can affirm positively of any speculations, guided by right scientific methods, on subjects really accessible to the human faculties, that they are incapable of being of any use?  Nobody knows what knowledge will prove to be of use, and what is destined to be useless.  The most that can be said is that some kinds are of more certain, and above all, of more present utility than others.  How often the most important practical results have been the remote consequence of studies which no one would have expected to lead to them!  Could the mathematicians, who, in the schools of Alexandria, investigated the properties of the ellipse, have foreseen that nearly two thousand years afterwards their speculations would explain the solar system, and a little later would enable ships safely to circumnavigate the earth?  Even in M. Comte’s opinion, it is well for mankind that, in those early days, knowledge was thought worth pursuing for its own sake.  Nor has the “foundation of Positivism,” we imagine, so far changed the conditions of human existence, that it should now be criminal to acquire, by observation and reasoning, a knowledge of the facts of the universe, leaving to posterity to find a use for it.  Even in the last two or three years, has not the discovery of new metals, which may prove important even in the practical