In short, Positivism proposes to itself to destroy Theology, Metaphysics, Spiritualism, Atheism, Materialism, Pantheism, and Science, and it must finally end in destroying itself. De Mirville thinks that according to Positivism, “order will begin to reign in the human mind only on the day when psychology will become a sort of cerebral physics, and history a kind of social physics.” The modern Mohammed first disburdens man and woman of God and their own soul, and then unwittingly disembowels his own doctrine with the too sharp sword of metaphysics, which all the time he thought he was avoiding, thus letting out every vestige of philosophy.
In 1864, M. Paul Janet, a member of the Institute, pronounced a discourse upon Positivism, in which occur the following remarkable words:
“There are some minds which were brought up and fed on exact and positive sciences, but which feel nevertheless, a sort of instinctive impulse for philosophy. They can satisfy this instinct but with elements that they have already on hand. Ignorant in psychological sciences, having studied only the rudiments of metaphysics, they nevertheless are determined to fight these same metaphysics as well as psychology, of which they know as little as of the other. After this is done, they will imagine themselves to have founded a Positive Science, while the truth is that they have only built up a new mutilated and incomplete metaphysical theory. They arrogate to themselves the authority and infallibility properly belonging alone to the true sciences, those which are based on experience and calculations; but they lack such an authority, for their ideas, defective as they may be, nevertheless belong to the same class as those which they attack. Hence the weakness of their situation, the final ruin of their ideas, which are soon scattered to the four winds.”[161]
The Positivists of America have joined hands in their untiring efforts to overthrow Spiritualism. To show their impartiality, though, they propound such novel queries as follows: “ ... how much rationality is there in the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, the Trinity and Transubstantiation, if submitted to the tests of physiology, mathematics, and chemistry?” and they “undertake to say, that the vagaries of Spiritualism do not surpass in absurdity these eminently respectable beliefs.” Very well. But there is neither theological absurdity nor spiritualistic delusion that can match in depravity and imbecility that positivist notion of “artificial fecundation.” Denying to themselves all thought on primal and final causes, they apply their insane theories to the construction of an impossible woman for the worship of future generations; the living, immortal companion of man they would replace with the Indian female fetich of the Obeah, the wooden idol that is stuffed every day with serpents’ eggs, to be hatched by the heat of the sun!
And now, if we are permitted to ask in the name of common-sense, why should Christian mystics be taxed with credulity or the spiritualists be consigned to Bedlam, when a religion embodying such revolting absurdity finds disciples even among Academicians?—when such insane rhapsodies as the following can be uttered by the mouth of Comte and admired by his followers: “My eyes are dazzled;—they open each day more and more to the increasing coincidence between the social advent of the feminine mystery, and the mental decadence of the eucharistical sacrament. Already the Virgin has dethroned God in the minds of Southern Catholics! Positivism realizes the Utopia of the mediæval ages, by representing all the members of the great family as the issue of a virgin mother without a husband....” And again, after giving the modus operandi: “The development of the new process would soon cause to spring up a caste without heredity, better adapted than vulgar procreation to the recruitment of spiritual chiefs, or even temporal ones, whose authority would then rest upon an origin truly superior, which would not shrink from an investigation.”[162]
To this we might inquire with propriety, whether there has ever been found in the “vagaries of Spiritualism,” or the mysteries of Christianity, anything more preposterous than this ideal “coming race.” If the tendency of materialism is not grossly belied by the behavior of some of its advocates, those who publicly preach polygamy, we fancy that whether or not there will ever be a sacerdotal stirp so begotten, we shall see no end of progeny,—the offspring of “mothers without husbands.”
How natural that a philosophy which could engender such a caste of didactic incubi, should express through the pen of one of its most garrulous essayists, the following sentiments: “This is a sad, a very sad age,[163] full of dead and dying faiths; full of idle prayers sent out in vain search for the departing gods. But oh! it is a glorious age, full of the golden light which streams from the ascending sun of science! What shall we do for those who are shipwrecked in faith, bankrupt in intellect, but ... who seek comfort in the mirage of spiritualism, the delusions of transcendentalism, or the will o’ the wisp of mesmerism?...”
The ignis fatuus, now so favorite an image with many dwarf philosophers, had itself to struggle for recognition. It is not so long since the now familiar phenomenon was stoutly denied by a correspondent of the London Times, whose assertions carried weight, till the work of Dr. Phipson, supported by the testimony of Beccaria, Humboldt, and other naturalists, set the question at rest.[164] The Positivists should choose some happier expression, and follow the discoveries of science at the same time. As to mesmerism, it has been adopted in many parts of Germany, and is publicly used with undeniable success in more than one hospital; its occult properties have been proved and are believed in by physicians, whose eminence, learning, and merited fame, the self-complacent lecturer on mediums and insanity cannot well hope to equal.
We have to add but a few more words before we drop this unpleasant subject. We have found Positivists particularly happy in the delusion that the greatest scientists of Europe were Comtists. How far their claims may be just, as regards other savants, we do not know, but Huxley, whom all Europe considers one of her greatest scientists, most decidedly declines that honor, and Dr. Maudsley, of London, follows suit. In a lecture delivered by the former gentleman in 1868, in Edinburg, on The Physical Basis of Life, he even appears to be very much shocked at the liberty taken by the Archbishop of York, in identifying him with Comte’s philosophy. “So far as I am concerned,” says Mr. Huxley, “the most reverend prelate might dialectically hew Mr. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I would not attempt to stay his hand. In so far as my study of what specially characterizes 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 anything in ultramontane Catholicism. In fact, Comte’s philosophy in practice might be compendiously described as Catholicism minus Christianity.” Further, Huxley even becomes wrathful, and falls to accusing Scotchmen of ingratitude for having allowed the Bishop to mistake Comte for the founder of a philosophy which belonged by right to Hume. “It was enough,” exclaims the professor, “to make David Hume turn in his grave, that here, almost within earshot of his house, an interested audience should have listened, without a murmur, whilst his most characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty years later date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigor of thought and the clearness of style....”[165]
Poor Comte! It appears that the highest representatives of his philosophy are now reduced, at least in this country, to “one physicist, one physician who has made a specialty of nervous diseases, and one lawyer.” A very witty critic nicknamed this desperate trio, “an anomalistic triad, which, amid its arduous labors, finds no time to acquaint itself with the principles and laws of their language.”[166]