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Those who are desirous of securing copies are requested to subscribe THE WILKIE GALLERY, containing sixty Splendid Enat our store, or at the various bookstores throughout the city and country without delay. gravings of that celebrated artist. 1 vol. folio, $25. Norton's Literary Gazette.clear, and systematic. NEW YORK, DEC. 1, 1854. The method of these become metaphysical, feigning abstract entities, sciences he would transfer to all the sciences, and ultimately one substance, as the sufficient and in doing this, he annuls psychology, meta- reason for phenomena. This, however, is but a physics, and theology. In neglect and obscurity transition to the highest stage, when, discerning he has labored, with intense devotion, to carry the unreality of such ideas, man and science his system through all the departments of phil- reach the ultimatum of positive science, and it The number for December 15th will be is-osophy, culminating in the most fantastic Re- is seen, that in the inductive method, in facts sued a few days in advance. Advertisements must classified, is the only abiding truth. Theology, be received by the 5th; and cuts for insertion metaphysics, positive science-these are the should be in hand by the 1st of the month. three stages of human development in the in Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences. By G. H. Lewes. London, Bohn, 1853. New York, Bangs, Brother & Co. Auguste Comte was born in 1798; was nurtured under the influence of Romanist and monarchial parents; was educated in the Polytechnic School; passed through the vagaries of Saint Simonism; about 1826 was in a lunatic asylum, whence he emerged, writing a criticism on Broussais' work on Insanity; taught in the Polytechnic School as a mere tutor, until 1842; wrote in the mean time, his course on Positive Philosophy, in 6 volumes, with other treatises; and has just completed his System of Positive Politics, or Social Science, by the publication of the fourth volume. Ignored in France, in Germany but slightly recognized, he is extolled by his English admirers as the "Bacon of the Nineteenth Century," or, to speak with Mr. Lewes, as "the greatest thinker of modern times." John Stuart Mill was among the first to proclaim his authority; the logic of Mill is based on the prinples of the system of Comte. Long known to a few students of philosophy as a daring and systematic thinker, he has suddenly become notorious. Miss Martineau would be to him what Dumont was to Bentham; she reduces his six volumes to two (republished here in one handsome octavo), wisely omitting the most offensive pas sages Her preface, as might be expected after her correspondence with Mr. Atkinson, throws down the gauntlet, with defiance and self-complacency, to all theologians and metaphysicians, proclaiming that "they must necessarily abhor, dread, and despise the work," which treats of theological belief as a transient state of the human mind." The positive philosophy, which "investigates from the universe inwards, and not from within outwards," is alone scientific and able to produce "moral" conviction. She is manifestly proud of the atheistic philosophy which she ushers into English. The work of Mr. Lewes is a popular sketch of the same sys tem, composed in the vivacious, distinet, and superficial style of his Biographical History of Philosophy," to which it is a fitting pendant and completion. ligion of Humanity which mortal man ever im- For a man of such illimitable pretensions, he is but moderately versed in the systems of the greatest thinkers even of ancient times, and still less with the illustrious expositors of philosophy in Germany. He nowhere grapples with the questions which have perplexed all true philosophers. He almost seems to think that his unproved dictum has annihilated the God of the divines, and the Ideas of philosophy; he tells us these have passed away, and lo! they are no more. His system is positive in another sense than that in which he fondles this term, it is a positive dogmatisin, and a positive inconsistency. Denying all human or divine authority, he speaks like a commissioned prophet to a lost race; abjuring theology, he excogitates a religion of humanity; scouting the whole idea of final causes, he gravely propounds the only true theory of the destiny of the race. His philosophy is an indication, and a vindication of a tendency of the times, which has here reached its most daring mood. The end of man, his only real good, is the subjugation of nature, for and by this society is to be re-organized; positive science is at once the instrument and the theory for attaining this end. This positive science is presented by M. Comte, in his different works, under four chief aspects, which make up its claims to recognition. Historically, it is the highest growth of the human mind; analytically, it gives the only correct method; systematically, it presents to us the true order or hierarchy of the sciences; and prophetically, it is the basis for the reorganization of society. Our limits will allow only a rapid glance at each of these four main pretensions of this scheme of godless materialism. gone Positive Science, then, it is claimed, is, in the historical order, the last and highest form of science, superseding all others. Man has through two other stages, the theological and the metaphysical; all men may, and all science does, pass through them. With the mature intellect, and in the maturity of the sciences, theology and metaphysics recede, and positive science becomes the final goal. Something of theology and metaphysics may still haunt the mind, but they are the shadows of memory and not the Within his propèr sphere, no one will deny realities of life. Man (and science) is at first to Mr. Comte the possession of great philosophi-theological, seeking the causes of phenomena in cal ability and the merit of successful and original the hypothesis of supernatural beings, in gods, exposition. In the philosophy of mathematics and ultimately in one God, beyond the sphere of and of the natural sciences, he is acute, learned, sense. Childhood passes; man and science next of this arrangement depends the claim of positive science to an historical supremacy. But th distribution has neither fact nor rea son in its favor. At the utmost it is applicable only to the natural sciences, and it is simply a covert way of saying that all truth is in the inductive sciences. But theology and metaphysics have their own spheres, and have always existed and co-existed. And all three may co-exist in the same mind in reference to the same body of facts; and they must do so, if we would have a complete science of the facts. There are questions in the natural sciences which only metaphysics can answer. All the natural sciences may, and have, become parts of a natural theo logy. Men of the highest celebrity in them, have been also speculative as well as theological. There is, there must be, a metaphysics of nature, as both Aristotle and Schelling testify. The race as a whole, has not passed through theology and metaphysics, in the sense of abandoning them. Are the Eclectics of France becoming positivists? Are the theologians of England becoming metaphysical? Are the naturalists of Germany its greatest men? The inductive philosophy has indeed advanced apace within two centuries; but so has speculative science in Germany; so has Protestant theology, in the same centuries, the world round. Thus, this theory does not fit the facts; and, besides, it has no reason in it. It cannot be shown to have a logical, nor even a psychologi cal, law in its favor; it is not a law, it is simply three terms put together. And what a weary waste of labor, for a race to be put through the sublimities of theology and the depths of metaphysics, in order to come down to the teachings of the five senses! What a satire on man! What an enigma his history! In youth to believe in an Infinite Power; in manhood to lend a willing ear to ideal truth; in order in maturity to see that nothing is real but the facts of materialism, and nothing is true but the system of Comte! Surely, this is the bitterest irony of human history. On historical grounds a better claim may be, and has been, made for the historical supremacy of German Idealism, than can possibly be con structed for the Positive Philosophy. Hegel's system tries to establish this point in a method, which, though fallacious, is infinitely in advance of any thing which Comte's school has ever imagined in the way of historical deduction. The second claim of the Positive Philosophy is, that in the observation and classification of outward facts, in the application to such facts of the inductive and deductive methods, we have the only true instrument of science. Herein is |