THE REACTION OF ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS OF THE NINETEENTH 
 CENTURY TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE 
 
 BY 
 
 GARRETA HELEN BUSEY 
 
 B. A. Wellesley College, 1915 
 
 THESIS 
 
 SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
 FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH 
 IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE 
 UIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 1922 
 
 URBANA, ILLINOIS 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/reactionofenglisOObuse 
 
\ u. u- 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
 
 3 / 
 
 192 
 
 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY 
 SUPERVISION BY 
 ENTITLED 
 
 /Vt\ 
 
 BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 
 
 it !j d 4 *£ tiCt 
 
 
 Head of Department 
 
 Recommendation concurred in* 
 
 Committee 
 
 on 
 
 Final Examination* 
 
 Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. 
 
 Early Interpreters 
 
 18 
 
 II. 
 
 The Universities 
 
 47 
 
 III. 
 
 The Priory 
 
 75 
 
 Conclu 
 
 sions 
 
 112 
 
 Partial List of Books Used 
 
 115 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 "Selon une excellent© remargue de M. Brunet iere," says 
 Lanson,^ "pour etablir la valeur d'unpoete, il suffit presque 
 de l'interroger sur trois points: comment a-t-il parle de la 
 nature, de 1* amour, de la mort?" The value of a writer to 
 others is indicated hy his attitude toward the material world 
 around him, toward other human beings, and toward those mys- 
 terious forces that are outside the realm of human knowledge* 
 
 Every mature thinking man must, consciously or unconsciously, 
 have taken some definite attitude towards these fundamental 
 problems of existence, and upon the stand which he has taken will 
 depend his self-expression, either in deed or word* Accordingly, 
 philosophy and literature are inextricably bound up together. 
 
 Into the great tapestry of the latter are woven all the various 
 threads of thought and emotion which man produces, forming a 
 subtly - varied , yet rhythmically recurrent pattern, 
 
 n, But there is no Religion?' says Professor Teufels- 
 drockh in Sartor Resartus , 'Pool.' I tell thee, there is. 
 
 Hast thou well considered all that lies in this immeasurable 
 
 2 
 
 froth-ocean we name LITERATURE. T " 
 
 Lanson, Hist or ie d e la Litt eratur e Eran^ais e . p. 239, 
 
 2 
 
 Carlyle, Sartor Resartus . p. 190. 
 
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 In their attempts to solve the fundamental 
 problems of life, men have arrived at such widely varying con- 
 clusions that a list of the schools of philosophy sounds almost 
 as ridiculous as Folonius* classification of the diframa. Among 
 the tangled threads of speculation, however, two tendencies are 
 discernable, i. e. faith in a supernatural religion, and denial. 
 
 "As in the long-drawn Systole and long-drawn Diastole, must the 
 period of Faith alternate with the period of Denial; must the ver- 
 nal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual 
 Representations and Creations, be followed by, and again follow, 
 the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution." 1 Man, with his 
 instinct to worship, builds churches, and, with his reason, tears 
 them down again. 
 
 Positivism is in line with the rationalistic tradition 
 and can trace its ancestry back to antiquity, when, even before 
 
 Aristotle, the polytheism of ancient Greece found critics who 
 
 ' ' 2 
 
 substituted for it either a single deity or a sort of materialism. 
 
 3 
 
 It was in the Renaissance, however, that the forces of rationalism, 
 the elements which were to produce posit iviem, became more evident, 
 receiving new life with the general blossoming forth of that time. 
 Science, in the form of astronomy, upset the ancient Christian 
 cosmography by insisting that, not the earth, but the sun was the 
 center of the universe. Bacon, in his Novum Organurc, reintro- 
 
 1 
 
 Carlyle, Sartor Resartus. p. 86. 
 
 2 
 
 Benn, Snglish Rational ism in the 19th Century . I, 59. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid. I, 86-87. 
 
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 duced inductive reasoning to prominence, Descartes, doubting 
 
 everything, Hobbes, who inaugurated modern materialism, and 
 1 
 
 Spinoza, in his reaction against the anthropomorhpism of the 
 
 traditional theology, in his denial of emotion and free will to 
 
 God, and his modern Biblical criticism, all were products of the 
 
 new freedom of thought of the Renaissance, 
 
 In England, the lineal descendants of Eobbes and Bacon 
 
 were Locke, Hume, Bentham, and the Utilitarians; in Erance, the 
 
 tradition was represented by Auguste Comte (1798-1857). 
 
 2 
 
 There are four circumstances in the life of Comte 
 which are of interest as possibly bearing upon the formation of 
 his theories and upon the task of tracing their influence in 
 England. (1) During his poverty-stricken youth in Paris, he be- 
 came a disciple of St. Simon, and, although he gradually grew 
 away from the teachings of this master, and finally broke with him 
 altogether, he took from him the two starting points of his 
 philosophy: "that political phenomena are as capable of being 
 grouped under laws as other phenomena," and "that the true desti- 
 nation of philosophy must be social, and the true object of the 
 thinker must be the reorganization of the moral, religious and 
 political systems." 
 
 (2) Comte worked out what he called Hygiene Cerebral, 
 "After he had acauired what he considered to be a sufficient 
 
 1 
 
 Calkins, The Per si st ent Problems of Philosophy , p. 298. 
 
 2 
 
 Morley, Article on Comte, Encycloped ia Britanni ca . VI, 
 
 p. 815 ff 
 

 
 
 
 
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 stock of material, and this happened before he had completed the 
 "Positive Philosophy , "he abstained from reading newspapers, reviews, 
 scientific transactions, and everything else, except two or three 
 poets (notably Dante) and the Imitatio Christi ." His only infor- 
 mation as to what was going on in science (on which he based his 
 philosophy) was that which he gained by conversation with his 
 
 friends, Dante and the Imitatio may have had some influence upon 
 
 0 ‘ " 
 
 0 
 
 the mystic tendency of his later theories, 
 
 (3) One of the great influences upon the life of Comte 
 was his devotion to Mme. Clotilde de Vaux, whose husband had been 
 sent to the galleys for life. After her death in 1846, her 
 memory seemed to have complete ascendancy over his mind. Every 
 
 * 
 
 week he made a pilgrimage to her tomb, and three times a day, he 
 invoked her memory in a sort of prayer. This was a part of the 
 ritual which he established for the Positivist religion. 
 
 (4) Owing to the fact that he devoted his time ex- 
 clusively to speculative thought, he was constantly in financial 
 difficulties, so that Emile Littr^, one of his disciples, pub- 
 lished an appeal for subscriptions, which was answered by a number 
 of writers in England, John Stuart Mill among them. This circum- 
 stance is of assistance in tracing the extent of his influence in 
 England • 
 
 In 1842 Comte's first work, the " Cours de Philosophic 
 Positive," was published, and from that date until his death in 
 1857 he was constantly elaborating his philosophy. In 1848 the 
 Positivist Society was founded, with the purpose of influencing 
 politics. Later it became a kind of church. 
 

 
 
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Positiviem, declares Comte, was founded "by Bacon, 
 Descartes, and Galileo, Descartes, "as great a geometer as 
 philosopher, derived Positivism from its true source, thus being 
 able to lay down its essential conditions with firmness and 
 precision. The discourse in which he simply narrates his own 
 evolution is an unconscious description of the human mind in 
 general." Galileo devoted his energies to the extension of 
 science, and Bacon dealt with the regeneration of the moral and 
 social field along positive lines. 1 2 3 
 
 The fundamental doctrine of Positivism is that "we have 
 no knowledge of anything but Phaenomena; and our knowledge of 
 
 phaenomena is relative, not absolute The constant 
 
 resemblances which link phaenomena together, and the constant 
 sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are 
 termed their laws. The laws of phaenomena are all we know re- 
 specting them. Their essential nature, and their ultimate 
 
 causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to 
 2 
 
 us." Positivism directs its labors to a study of the laws of 
 
 3 
 
 phenomena, its object being to "pursue an active discovery" 
 of them and to reduce them to the smallest possible number. There 
 is no hope of reducing them to one single law, however. "While 
 pursuing the philosophical aim of all science, the lessening of 
 the number of general laws requisite for the explanation of nat- 
 
 1 
 
 Comte, Positive Philosophy, II. 352-353. 
 
 2 
 
 Mill. Comte and Positivism, p. 6. 
 
 3 
 
 Comte, Op. cit . I, 5. 
 

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 ural phenomena, we shall regard &s presumptuous every attempt, 
 
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 in all future time, to reduce them rigorously to one." 
 
 This, it will he readily seen, is a philosophy which, 
 
 rejecting metaphysics, bases itself entirely upon science and 
 
 is inseparable from it. It makes use of both deductive and 
 
 inductive reasoning, preferring the former for special researches, 
 
 2 
 
 the latter for the discovery of fundamental laws. 
 
 The " 0 ours de Philos ophie Posi t i ve" begins with an 
 exposition of the law of three states . which is, briefly, as 
 
 follows: "each of our leading conceptions each branch of 
 
 our knowledge — - passes successively through three different 
 theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the 
 Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive." The 
 Theological state is that in which the mind supposes the cause of 
 phenomena to be the action of supernatural forces. Its highest 
 phase is monotheism. The Metaphysical state supposes phenomena 
 to be produced by abstract forces, and its highest point is that 
 at which Nature is considered the cause of all phenomena. In 
 the third etage, man has given up the pursuit of absolute know- 
 ledge and is content to study the laws of phenomena. Its 
 highest point would be the discovery of a single governing law, 
 such as that of gravitation, if such a thing were possible. 
 
 This state is reached when men have learned by experience the 
 limits of their own powers. 
 
 1 
 
 Comte, Op. cit . , I, 14. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid, II, 428. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid , I, 2-4. 
 

 
 
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 On this basis Comte proceedes to classify the sciences 
 in the order in which they pass from the theological to the meta- 
 physical, and on to the positive stage. The sciences become 
 positive in the order of their complexity, the simpler ones, such 
 as mathematics, reaching the positive stage first. Thus "each 
 science depends on the truths of all those which precede it, with 
 the addition of peculiar truths of its own." * 1 2 3 
 
 The law of three states leads Comte to a theory of his- 
 
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 torical evolution, by which he is enabled to see past, present, 
 and future events in their relation to each other and to the 
 general law. In his opinion, the race was, at that time, on the 
 threshold of a positive age. 
 
 It also leads to his sociological and political doctrines, 
 which are, in accordance with the second of the principles which 
 he derived from St. Simon, the aim of his philosophy. Sociology 
 he regarded as the last of the sciences to enter into the positive 
 state, and he attributed the social chaos of the time to the mix- 
 ture of theological, metaphysical, and positive elements in its 
 
 ideas. The remedy would consist in bringing sociology entirely 
 
 3 
 
 into the positive state. 
 
 The social and political system, which Comte worked out, 
 is a very elaborate one and is presented in his "Positive 
 Polity. " It provided fora spiritual power, consisting of a 
 
 body of philosophers, which should act as an advisory council 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Ojd. cit., p. 33-37. 
 
 2 
 
 Comte, Op. cit., 387, Vol. II. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., I, 12-13. 
 
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 for the temporal power. The latter was not to he representative 
 
 but was to consist of capitalists whose authority was to be rated 
 
 according to the "degree of generality of their conceptions and 
 
 operations.” It was to be checked by the spiritual power and by 
 
 free discussion on the part of inferiors.^ 
 
 The position of women was to be raised — theoretically. 
 
 They were to be lifted above material cares, thoroughly educated, 
 
 and excluded from public action, in order that their influence 
 
 over men might be carried to the highest point. They were to 
 
 play their part in religion— for Comte believed that religion 
 
 was necessary. The progress of mankind is dependent upon the 
 
 victory of social feeling over self-love, he maintained, which 
 
 victory is only possible by the subordination of the intellect to 
 
 the emotion. It is the part of religion to assure this victory. 
 
 Religion implies a being to worship, and Positivism, completely 
 
 agnostic with regard to everything not based on observed facts, 
 
 lacks a God. Comte, looking about for some other being to fill 
 
 the place, lights upon humanity, spells it with a capital letter, 
 
 and worships, with a set of rites and ceremonies modeled after the 
 
 Catholic church to insure the proper cult of the emotions. To 
 
 woman, according to the doctrines of Positivism, is given the 
 
 moral providence of the Great Being, and her guardianship over 
 
 man's moral nature is of three types, as seen in the mother, 
 
 representing protection; the wife, union; and the daughter, 
 
 2 
 
 obedience . 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Ojd. cit . . p. 122. 
 
 2 
 
 Morley, Article on Comte . Encyc loped ia Britannica . 
 
 Vol. VI, pp. 821-822. 
 

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 A Positivist Calendar was made out, containing the 
 names of those who had best served Humanity, and the memory of 
 these saints was to be invoked at certain times. This was to 
 take the place of prayer, although the soul was not conceded to 
 be immortal. Among the names on the Positivist Calendar, were 
 those of Gutenberg, Shakespeare, and Czar Nicholas of Russia, 
 who was still living at the time. 
 
 Morality, under this system, had its basis in a sense 
 
 of duty, produced by the ascendency of the spirit of generality 
 
 due to the fulfilment of the intellectual evolution, which would 
 
 2 
 
 come about with the prevalence of Positivism. It was to be 
 furthered by the various rites designed to cultivate the emotions 
 The inconsistency of making morality depend on intellect and 
 furthering it by the cultivation of emotion for the purpose of 
 subordinating the intellect, is obvious. 
 
 The prieethood, or spiritual authority mentioned above, 
 was to be sanctioned by the voluntary adhesion of the people, 
 and was to be chosen for the intellectual eminence of its members 
 rather than for their greatness of character. It was to possess 
 no wealth; would counsel, not command; and its duties were to be 
 those of directing education, influencing public and private life 
 arbitrating in cases of conflict, preaching sermons, ordering the 
 classification of society (for there were to be distinct, but not 
 iron-bound classes) and performing the rites and ceremonies of 
 
 1 
 
 Morley, Article on Comt e , Encyclopedia Britannica . 
 
 Vol. VI, pp. 817-818. 
 
 2 
 
 Comte, Op. cit., II, 388. 
 

 
 
 
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 1 
 
 the Positivist religion. 
 
 The Comtian theories were launched at a time when the 
 
 spiritualistic philosophy of Germany was in possession of the 
 
 field in Prance. There had been a reaction against the scepticism 
 
 of the Revolution at the beginning of the century, marked by 
 
 Chateaubriand’s "Genie de Chri st ianisme" in 1802, and German 
 
 ideas had come in with what Georges Brandes characterized as 
 
 2 
 
 "la litterature d es emigres." This idealism, having been es- 
 tablished and officially taught for 30 years, had become in- 
 ferior to the newer and freer thought which was fermenting in the 
 3 
 
 Latin Quarter and other places of discussion, through having 
 
 constantly to compromise and accomodate itself to the political 
 
 4 
 
 exigencies and the needs of a whole people. 
 
 Positivism, which began to appear in the 5th decade, 
 
 spread very slowly. Comte did not have the art of making his 
 
 works readable, and the mystic doctrines of his later years 
 
 3 z' 
 
 destroyed his prestige. Even Littre, the French lexicographer 
 
 and philosopher, vho was the most eminent of his disciples, did 
 not believe in the Religion of Humanity. Mill states 0 the 
 situation in Prance as follows: "The great treatise of M. Comte 
 
 1 
 
 Morley, Ojd. cit . . p. 821. 
 
 2 
 
 Barzellotti. La Philosophic de H. Taine, p. 65-66. 
 
 3 
 
 Barzellotti, _0 jd • cit . . pp. 74-76. 
 
 4 
 
 Ibid . . pp. 68-69. 
 
 5 
 
 Morley. Article on Comte. Enclycloped ia Britannica. 
 
 6 
 
 Mill, _0p. cit . . p. 2 — 3 
 

 
 
 
 
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 was scarcely mentioned in French literature or criticism, when it 
 was already working powerfully on the minds of many British students 
 and thinkers. But agreeably to the usual course of things in 
 France, the new tendency, when it set in, set in more strongly. 
 
 Those who call themselves Positivists are indeed not numerous; 
 but all French writers who adhere to the common philosophy, now 
 feel it necessary to begin by fortifying their position against 
 'the Positivist school.' And the mode of thinking thus desig- 
 nated is already manifesting its importance by one of the un- 
 equivocal signs, the appearance of thinkers who attempt a com- 
 promise or juste milieu between it and its opposite. The acute 
 critic and metaphysician M. Taine, and the distinguished chemist 
 M. Berthelot, are the authors of the two most conspicuous of 
 these attempts." 
 
 In a study of Positivism and Engli eh lit erature , the 
 
 name of Taine, mentioned in this connection, is of great interest. 
 
 Naturally attracted to the study of England by a peculiar 
 
 affinity with what he regarded as the genius of the Anglo-Saxon 
 
 race, he set about to study its culture and became more familiar 
 
 1 
 
 with it than with that of any other country outside of France. 
 
 This contact between the literatures of the two nations is 
 represented by his masterly treatment of the history of English 
 literature, which could not help but exert an influence on 
 English thought. 
 
 That Hippolyte Taine was a disciple of Comte cannot be 
 truthfully said, for he was too broad a spirit to confine his 
 
 1 
 
 Barzellotti, Op. cit . . p. 87. 
 

 
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 ideas within the limits of that system, although he represented 
 
 it, in a large sense. The Hon, Maurice Baring, in an article 
 
 1 
 
 in the Encyclopedia Britannica says: "Taine T s doctrine consisted 
 
 in an inexorable determinism, a negation of metaphysics; as a 
 philosopher he was a positivist. Enamoured as he was of the 
 precise and the definite, the spiritualist philosophy in vogue 
 in 1845 poeitiviely maddened him. He returned to the philosophy 
 of the 18th century, especially to Condillac and to the theory of 
 transformed sensation. Taine presented this philosophy in a 
 vivid, vigorous and polemical form, and in concrete and coloured 
 language which made his works more accessible, and consequently 
 more influential than those of Auguste Comte, Hence to the men 
 of 1860 Taine was the true representative of positivism." This 
 in spite of the fact that he never mentions Comte except in his 
 work on Mill (where, however, he shows himself familiar with the 
 Comtian theories), which circumstance makes it difficult to 
 determine how much of his positivism is derived from Comte and 
 how much is due to his own genius plus the general spirit of the 
 age. 
 
 In 1852 he was reading Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, and Geothe. 
 
 About this time he gave up teaching and went to Paris, determined 
 
 3 
 
 to live entirely by his pen. Here he was constantly in contact 
 
 1 
 
 Baring, Article on H. Taine. Encyclopedia Britan nica . 
 Vol. XXVI, p. 360 ff. 
 
 2 
 
 Barzellotti. Op. cit.. p. 69. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., pp. 34-43. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 with a group of thinkers in which the new philosophic ideas 
 
 were being earnestly discussed,, among them Renan and Sainte- 
 1 2 
 
 Beuve. A* Sorel describes the Paris of 1853, "qui, dans une 
 
 sorte d ’effervescence sourde de mine et de laboratoire, couvait 
 
 une revolution dans la science et dans les lettres frangaises. 
 
 On y travaillait, on y pensait , sans autre objet oue la 
 
 verite, sane souci des consequences pratiques; que dis-je? avec 
 
 le mepris de ces consequences." And it was here that Taine’s 
 
 ideas became more and more positive and hie method of reasoning 
 
 3 
 
 shifted from deduction to induction. It is significant that 
 this was just the period in which Comte was publishing his works 
 (1842-1857) . 
 
 In reality Taine occupies a middle position between 
 
 Comte and the spiritualistic doctrines of the Germans, then in 
 
 power in Prance. He exposed the latter as impotent before the 
 
 new science, agreeing with Comte (1) in condemning the traditional 
 
 metaphysical theories (although Taine admitted the possibility 
 
 of metaphysics), (2) in maintaining that philosophy should not 
 
 concern itself with the cause and essence of things, regarded 
 
 as the basis of facts, and (3) in emphasizing the idea that 
 
 science should be regarded solely as the study of facts, their 
 
 4 
 
 laws, and their system. 
 
 1 
 
 Baring, Article in Encycloped ia Britannica . Vol. XXVI, 
 
 p. 360 ff. 
 
 2 
 
 Barzellotti, Ojd. cit . . p. 43. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., p. 50 and Baring, Op. cit., p. 361. 
 
 4 
 
 Barzellotti, 0£. cit.., p. 69. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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 On the other hand, hie departure from Positivism is 
 indicated in hie study of John Stuart Mill, published in his 
 "History of English Literature . It is written in the form of 
 a dialogue between an English student and himself, during which 
 he (Taine) says: "It seems to me that these two dispositions are 
 
 most frequently met with in an English mind. r j?he religious and 
 the positive spirit dwell there side by side, but separate. This 
 produces an odd medley, and I confess that I prefer the way in 
 which the Germans have reconciled science with faith. — - But," 
 replies his interlocutor, "their philosophy is but badly-written 
 poetry. — - Perhaps so. — But what they call reason, or intuition 
 of principles, is only the faculty of building up hypotheses. 
 
 — - Perhaps so. But the systems which they have constructed 
 
 have not held their ground before experience. - — I do not defend 
 what they have done.™ But their absolute, their subject, their 
 object, and the rest, are but big words. — I do not defend their 
 style. — What, then, do you defend? — - Their idea of Causation. 
 
 You think there is an intermediate course between 
 
 intuition and observation, capable of arriving at principles, 
 as it is affirmed that the first is, capable of arriving at truths, 
 as we find that the second is? — — Yes. What is it? Abstraction." 
 
 It is not possible, in the limits of this paper, to 
 make a study of Renan and Saint e-Beuve, who were associated with 
 Taine and who also exerted some influence upon English men of 
 
 1 
 
 Taine, Hist ory o f English Literature . p. 694. 
 
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 letters, Renan seemed to be imbued with the positivist spirit 
 in some respects, but he denies that it came from Oomte. "La 
 
 1 
 
 science positive," says he in " Souvenirs d 'Enfance et de Jeunesse , " 
 
 "resta pour moi la seulo source de verite. Hue tard , j'eprouvai 
 
 une sorte d'agacement a voir la reputation exageree d'Auguste 
 
 Comte, erige en grand homme de premier ordre pour avoir dit, en 
 
 mauvais frangais, ce que tous les esprit s scient if iaues , depuis 
 
 deux cents ane, ont vu aussi clairement que lui," 
 
 In England, racial characteristics and the conditions 
 
 of the times seemed to have been such as to warrant a welcome for 
 
 Positivism, The tradition of Hume was being carried on in the 
 
 Utilitarian school, which, according to Taine, represented the 
 
 English genius, in spite of the fact complained of by Mill that 
 
 there were "twenty a priori and spiritualist philosophers for every 
 
 2 
 
 partizan of the doctrine of experience." The study of science 
 
 was becoming wide-spread throughout the entire population. "The 
 
 growth of a scientific taste among the working classes of this 
 
 3 
 
 country, "says Harriet Martineau, "is one of the most striking 
 of the signs of the times. I beli evo no one can inquire into 
 the mode of life of young men of the middle and operative classes 
 without being struck with the desire that is shown, and the sacri- 
 fices that are made, to obtain the means of scientific study." 
 Moreover, this wide-spread study of science was making extensive 
 
 1 
 
 Renan, Souvenirs d.' Enfance et de Jeunesse . p. 182. 
 
 2 
 
 Taine, Op. cit . , p. 675, note. 
 
 3 
 
 Comte, Ojd . cit . . Introduction by H. Martineau, p. v. 
 

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 inroads on the faith of the people in the traditional theology 
 of the church. "The supreme dread , " Miss Martinoau continues, 
 
 "of every one who cares for the good of nation or race is that 
 men should he adrift for want of an anchorage for their convic- 
 tions. I believe that no one questions that a very large propor- 
 tion of our people are now so adrift. With pain and fear, we see 
 that a multitude, who might and should be among the wisestand best 
 of our citizens, are alienated for ever from the kind of faith 
 which sufficed for all in an organic period which has passed away, 
 while no one had presented to them, and they cannot obtain for 
 themselves, any ground of conviction as firm and clear as that 
 which sufficed for our fathers in their day." Many felt the 
 same sense of religious loss and uncertainty expressed by 
 Matthew Arnold in many of his poems. 
 
 "Oh, hide me in your gloom profound. 
 
 Ye solemn seats of holy pain. 1 
 
 Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round. 
 
 Till I possess my soul again! 
 
 Till free my thoughts before me roll. 
 
 Not chafed by hourly false control. 
 
 For the world cries your faith is now 
 But a dead time*s exploded dream; 
 
 My melancholy, sciolists say. 
 
 Is a pass*d mode, an outworn theme — 
 
 As if the world had ever had i 
 A faith, or sciolists been sad." 
 
 Social conditions in England at this period were ad- 
 mittedly bad, and the middle of the century was marked by 
 demonstrations of social unrest, such as the Chartist movement. 
 
 1 
 
 Arnold, ioercs, p. 272. 
 
 90-102. 
 
 The Grand e Chartreuse . LI 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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 Everything seemed favorable for the advent of a doctrine 
 founded on the type of philosophy congenial to the English 
 genius; based on science; whose chief aim was frankly social; 
 and which offered, as a religion on which to base one*s actions, 
 something more consistent with the tendencies of thought of the 
 age than was supplied by the old revealed faith. 
 

 
 
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 EARLY INTERPRETERS 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that the doctrines 
 of Comte, because they were in accord with the rationalism of 
 the age, made a triumphal entry into England, sweeping all before 
 them* On the contrary, the system in its entirety was never 
 widely accepted, nor even widely known in England, 
 
 "At no time," says Benn,^ "has Positivism acted on public 
 opinion in the way its founder anticipated, as a complete body 
 of doctrine. What fell in with the tendencies of the age was 
 
 picked out; what opposed them fell away Positivism, in 
 
 fact, told on English thought not so much by awakening interest 
 in new ideas as by resuscitating old ideas originally peculiar 
 to this island and afterwards discredited by the religious 
 revival." It turned the attention of Englishmen again to the 
 ideas of Hume, Thomas Brown, and James Mill* 
 
 The works of Comte could never be popular — they were 
 too unreadable. The ideas put forth in them had to pass through 
 the medium of philosophic interpreters before they could be un- 
 derstood by the mass, and thus they were liable to become tinged 
 with the convictions of those thinkers. Frederic Harrison 
 
 describes the situation in 1869 in an article in the Fortnightly 
 2 
 
 Review . "Those who have honestly studied or even actually 
 1 
 
 Bann, History of Rationalism . I, 417-418. 
 
 2 
 
 Fortnightly Review . Nov. 1, 1869, Vol. 12, pp. 469-470. 
 

 
 
 
 
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- 19 ' 
 
 read these difficult works," he says, "may he counted on the 
 hand; and no methodical exposition of them exists in this country* 
 The full adherents of this system in England are known to he few; 
 and they hut rarely address the public* Amongst the regular 
 students of Comte two or three alone find means occasionally to 
 exprese their views, and that for the most part on special subjects. 
 Such is the only medium through which the ideas of Comte are form- 
 ulated -- a mass of writings practically unread; a handful of 
 disciples for the most part silent. 
 
 "On the other hand, the press and society, platform and 
 pulpit, are continually resounding with criticism, invective, 
 
 and moral reflection arrayed against this system The 
 
 critics cut and thrust at will well knowing there is no one to 
 
 retaliate; Religious journalism, too, delights to use the 
 
 name of Comte as a sort of dark relief to the glowing colors of 
 the Scarlet Woman. Semi-religious journals detect his subtle 
 influence in everything from the last poem to the coming revo- 
 lution. Drowsy congregations are warned against doctrines from 
 which they run as little risk as they do from that of Partheno- 
 genesis, and which they are yet less likely to understand. 
 
 Society even knows all about it, and chirrups the last gossip or 
 jest at afternoon tea-tables. Yet even under this the philosophy 
 of Comte survives; for criticism of this kind, it need hardly be 
 said, is not for the most part according to knowledge." 
 
 Among the first exponents of the Positivist doctrines 
 in England were John Stuart Mill, Richard Congreve, influential 
 at Oxford, George Henry Lewes, whom I shall take up in a later 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ! .. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 — 
 
 
 
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 — 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 20 - 
 
 chapter, and Harriet Martineau, who was first to translate the 
 
 "Philosophic Positive ." For several years before the latter 
 
 came in contact with Positivism, she had been interested in 
 
 rationalism and the philosophy of Bacon, influenced by a Mr. 
 
 Atkinson, a mesmerist, to whom she ascribes her cure from a long 
 
 illness.^ Through him she came to regard science as the "sole 
 
 and eternal basis of wisdom — and therefore of morality and peace," 
 
 to believe that "to form any true notion whatever of any of the 
 
 affairs of the universe, we must take our stand in the external 
 
 world ,— regard ing man as one of the products and subjects of the 
 
 everlasting laws of the universe, and not as the favourite of its 
 
 Maker; a favourite to whom it is rendered subservient by divine 
 
 partiality." She saw philosophy founded upon science as the 
 
 one thing needful to the promotion of intellectuality, morality, 
 
 3 
 
 and peace among men, 
 
 With Mr. Atkinson, she published a 
 
 series of "Letters on Man's Nature and Development," setting forth 
 4 
 
 these views. They appeared in 1851. Meanwhile, in 1850, 
 
 she was becoming interested in the philosophy of Auguste Comte. 
 
 She tells, in her autobiography, how she came to translate the 
 
 5 
 
 "Philosophy Positive: " 
 
 "It appears, from two or three notices above, that 
 Comte’s philosophy was at this time a matter of interest to me. 
 
 H. Martineau, Autobiography , I, 489-90 
 
 * 
 
 Ibid .. II, 28. 
 
 5 
 
 Ibid., II, 29-30. 
 
 I 
 
 Ibid . , II, 31. 
 
 Ibid., II, 57. 
 

 
 
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21 - 
 
 After hearing Comte’s name for many years, and having a 
 
 vague notion of the relation of hie philosophy to the intellectual 
 and social needs of the time, I obtained something like a clear 
 preparatory view, at second-hand, from a friend, at whose house 
 in Yorkshire I was staying, before going to Bolton, in 1850* 
 
 What I learned then and there impelled me to study the great book 
 
 for myself; and in the spring of 1850 I got the book, and 
 
 set to work. I bad meantime looked at Lewes's chapter on Comte 
 in Mr. Knight's Weekly Volume, and at Littre's epitome; and I 
 could thus, in a manner, see the end from the beginning of the 
 complete and extended work. This must be my excuse for the early 
 date at which I conceived the scheme of translating the Bhilosophie 
 Positive . 
 
 But the translation of six volumes of Comte's very 
 difficult writing was an enormous task. 
 
 "M. Comte's style is singular,” she says in her preface 
 to the work.^ "It is at the same time rich and diffuse. 
 
 Every sentence is full fraught with meaning; yet it is overloaded 
 with words. His scrupulous honesty leads, him to guard his 
 enunciations with epithets so constantly repeated, that though, 
 to his own mind, they are necessary in each individual instance, 
 they become wearisome, especially towards the end of his work, 
 and lose their effect by constant repetition.” 
 
 Accordingly, she condensed the six volumes into two, 
 with the result that Comte himself placed hor work, to the 
 
 1 
 
 Comte, Posit iv e Bhilosophie . Preface by H. Martineau, 
 
 Vol. I, p. iv. 
 

 
 
 
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- 22 - 
 
 exclue ion of his own " Philosophic Positive , " among the hooks which 
 a positivist library should contain, end long after his death, 
 
 N. Av e sac-Lav i gne , one of his friends, wrote to her asking per- 
 mission to translate her translation into French. 1 
 
 That Harriet Martineau T s rationalism created quite a 
 
 furor among her friends shows that England was by no means in 
 
 a condition to be converted to Positivism at once. Her brother 
 
 James, the Unitarian minister, was entirely out of sympathy with 
 
 her, and many of her nearest friends were scandalized. A great 
 
 deal of the criticism came from ignorance. She tells of one 
 
 incident which will illustrate the attitude of many people towards 
 
 2 
 
 Comte and Positivism. In October, 1851, while she was at work 
 on her translation, an eminent philosopher from Scotland was 
 her guest at dinner. During the course of the evening he asked 
 her about her work, and made continued aspersions upon Comte, and 
 insulting remarks to her as his translator. 
 
 "I saw,” she says, "that he knew nothing of what he 
 was talking about; and I then merely asked him i f he had read 
 the portion of the work he was abusing. Being pressed, he 
 
 reluctantly answered No; but he knew all about it. When the 
 
 dessert was on the table, end the servants were gone, he still 
 continuing his criticisms, I looked him full in the face, and 
 again inquired if he had read that portion of the Philosophy 
 
 1 
 
 H. Martineau, Autobiography, II, p. 422. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., II, p. 74. 
 

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-23- 
 
 Posi tive : — *N-n~o*: but he knew all about it. 'Come,' said 
 
 I: T tell me, — have you ever seen the book?* ’Ho; I can't 
 
 say I have;* he replied 'but I know all about it . f 'Now,* said 
 I, 'look at the bookshelves behind you. You see those six 
 volumes in green paper? Now you can say that you have seen the 
 book. *" 
 
 During her last illness, which began the year after the 
 publication of the Post t ive Philosophy . Harriet Martineau 
 was vastly amused at the concern expressed by many as to the 
 wellfare of her soul. They could not understand how, with her 
 opinions about dying,, she was not miserable in the knowledge 
 that her death was approaching. They sent her all sorts of 
 religious tracts and pamphlets, and one person sent her a New 
 Testament, "as if I had never seen one before," she remarks with 
 amusement. In one case, a person who signed herself "Charlotte” 
 wrote demanding that she destroy all of her writings "because 
 they give pain to the pious." She says, "It would have been 
 amusing to see what she would' think of a proposal that 'the 
 pious’ should withdraw all their writings, because they give 
 pain to the philosophical. It might have been of service to 
 suggest the simple expedient, in relief of the pious, that they 
 should not read books which offend them."^ 
 
 There were others of her friends, however, who commended 
 her for her courage, even if they did not feel attracted to her 
 doctrines. Among these was Matthew Arnold. Miss Martineau 
 
 1 
 
 H. Martineau, Ojd. cit . . II, 109-111. 
 
T 
 
 T 
 
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 ft 
 
 a 
 
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-24- 
 
 was a neighbor of the Arnolds at their home at Fox Hour in 
 
 Westmoreland. In 1855, the year of her death, Arnold writes 
 1 
 
 to his mother: 
 
 2 
 
 "As to the poem in Fraser . I hope K. sent you a letter 
 I wrote to her on the subject, in which I told her that I knew 
 absolutely nothing of Harriet Martineau’s works or debated 
 matters — had not even seen them, that I know of nor do I ever 
 mention her creed with the slightest applause, but only her 
 
 boldness in avowing it. The want of independence of mind 
 
 is so eminently a vice of the English I think, of the last hun- 
 dred years that I cannot but praise a person whose one 
 
 effort seems to have been to deal perfectly honestly and sincerely 
 with herself, although for the speculations into which this 
 effort has led her I have not the slightest sympathy. I shall 
 never be found to identify myself with her or her people, but 
 neither shall I join, nor have the least community of feeling 
 with her attackers." 
 
 Harriet Martineau*s influence in the spread of Positivism 
 seems to have been for the most part through her translation of 
 the Philosophie Positive , rather than through personal contact 
 with literary people. She was not the center of a brilliant 
 group of writers, as were George Henry Lewes and George Eliot, 
 
 1 
 
 Arnold, Letters „ collected and arranged by Geo. W. S. 
 Russell, Vol. I, p p. 58-59. 
 
 2 
 
 Haworth Churchyard : 
 
 "The other, maturer in fame. 
 
 Earning, she too, her praise 
 First in Fiction, had since 
 Widened her sweep, and surveyed 
 History, Politics, Mind." etc. 
 
t 
 
 t 
 
25— 
 
 although she had a wide acquaintance among the writers of the 
 time* Her deafness and her long illness made much social con- 
 tact difficult in the years after she took up the study of Comte* 
 Nor, on the other hand, was she the head of a philosophical and 
 political "school,” as was John Stuart Mill. But her Posit ive 
 Philosophy made the study of Comte much easier, and enabled his 
 doctrines to reach many people who might not otherwise have read 
 them. 
 
 As early as fourteen years before Harriet Martineau 
 became interested in Positivism, it had attracted the alert mind 
 of John Stuart Mill. It was about 1837, while he was at work 
 upon his Logic . that it first came to his attention. At that 
 time only the first two volumes of the Philosophie Posit ive had 
 been published, but he read them eagerly, and acknowledges that 
 Comte’s theories influenced, in some measure, his own views as 
 expressed in the Logic 
 
 "My theory of Induction was substantially completed 
 before I knew of Comte’s book," he says, explaining that he came 
 to it by a different road, and that he emphasizes "reduction of 
 the inductive process to strict rules and to a scientific test, 
 such as the syllogism is for ratiocination," whilo Comte "does 
 not even attempt any exact definitions of the conditions of 
 proof," which was the specific problem Mill had proposed to 
 himself* 
 
 "In a merely logical point of view," he goes on, "the 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, J. S.. Auto biography, p. 209-211* 
 

 
 
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■ 26 ~ 
 
 only leading concept ion for which I am indebted to him is that 
 of the Inverse Deductive Method, as the one chiefly applicable to 
 the complicated subjects of History and Statistics: a process 
 differing from the more common form of the deductive method in 
 this — - that instead of arriving at its conclusions by general 
 reasoning, and verifying them by specific experience fas is the 
 natural order of the deductive branches of physical science), 
 it obtains its generalities by a collation of specific experience, 
 and verifies them by ascertaining whether they are such as would 
 follow from known general principles. This was an idea entirely 
 new to me when I found it in Comte: and but for him I might not 
 soon (if ever) have arrived at it.” 
 
 Mill never actually met Comte, although he carried on 
 a rather lively correspondence with him for a number of years, 
 until the diversity of their opinions became so great that they 
 ceased writing. The letters began in 1841 and at first they 
 were extremely open, frank, and cordial. Mill revealing more of 
 
 his personal thoughts and feelings than he usually told to any- 
 
 2 
 
 body. In 1843 the cordiality diminished. Mill says: 
 
 "I was the first to slacken correspondence; he was the 
 first to drop it. I found, and he probably found likewise, that 
 I could do no good to his mind, and that all the good he could 
 do to mine, he did by his books. This would never have led to 
 discontinuance of intercourse, if the differences between us had 
 been matters of simple doctrine. But they were chiefly on those 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Autobiography, pp. 209-211. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid . , 211. 
 

 
 t 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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-27' 
 
 points of opinion which blended in both of us with our strongest 
 feelings and determined the entire direction of our aspirations.” 
 A clue to the nature of one of these points is given 
 by Alexander Bain, who says in his Autobiography that in 1843 
 Mill’s correspondence with Oomte was"very warm on the women ques- 
 tion; but here the diversity between the two was incurable."^ 
 
 This was a matter which went very deep with Mill. Bain says 
 that some years later Mill showed these letters to a friend of 
 the former, but that when he had re-read them himself, he was so 
 
 dissatisfied with the concessions he had made to Comto that ho 
 
 2 
 
 never would show them to anyone again. 
 
 Mill’s objection to Comte’s theories on the subject 
 
 of women were concerned with the low place given them in the 
 
 social and political scheme of Positivism "the irrevocability 
 
 of the (marriage) engagement, the complete subordination of the 
 
 wife to the husband, and of women generally to men," which he 
 
 characterized as "precisely the great vulnerable points of the 
 
 3 
 
 existing constitution of society on this important subject." 
 
 There was another side, however, to Comte’s view of the position 
 of women, which was not so far distant from Mill’s own as may be 
 suppos ed . 
 
 The attachment which the French philosopher conceived 
 for Mine. Clotilde de Vaux has been mentioned elsewhere in this 
 paper. It partook of the nature of a religious devotion, and 
 
 1 
 
 Bain, Alexander, Autobiography, p. 159. 
 
 2 
 
 Bain, Alexander, J. S. Mill, p. 74. 
 
 3 
 
 Mill, Comte end Positivism, pp. 91-92. 
 
f 
 
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 T 
 
 4> \ 
 
 
 
 T 
 
 T 
 
-28 
 
 from it sprang much of the sentiment which characterized the 
 
 Religion of Humanity. Mill refers to this connection of Gomte 
 
 1 
 
 in the following manner: 
 
 "The other circumstance of a personal nature which it 
 Is impossible not to notice, because M. Gomte is perpetually 
 referring to it as the origin of the great superiority which he 
 ascribes to hie later as compared with his earlier speculations, 
 is the ’moral regeneration* which he underwent from 'une angelique 
 influence* and 'une incomparable passion privee.' He formed a 
 passionate attachment to a lady whom he describes as uniting 
 everything which is morally with much that is intellectually 
 admirable, and his relation to whom, besides the direct influence 
 of her character upon his own, gave him an insight into the true 
 sources of human happiness, which changed his whole conception 
 of life. This attachment, which always remained pure, gave him 
 but one year of passionate enjoyment, the lady having been cut 
 off by death at the end of that short period; but the adoration 
 of her memory survived, and became, as we shall see, the type of 
 his conception of the sympathetic culture proper for all human 
 beings. The change thus effected in his personal character and 
 sentiments, manifested itself at once in his speculations; which, 
 from having been only a philosophy, now aspired to become a 
 religion; and from having been as purely, and almost rudely, 
 scientific and intellectual, as was compatible with a character 
 always enthusiastic in its admirations and in its ardour for 
 human improvement, became from this time what, for want of a better 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, C omt e and Positivism, pp. 130-133. 
 

 
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 name, may be called sentimental; but sentimental in a way of its 
 own, very curious to contemplate. In considering the system of 
 religion, politics, and morals, which in his later writings M. 
 Comte constructed, it is not unimportant to bear in mind the 
 nature of the personal experience and inspiration to which he 
 himself constantly attributed this phasis of his philosophy.” 
 
 Mill then goes on to speak of the ennobling influence Mine. de 
 Vaux exerted over the character of Comte, and of improvement in 
 his feelings due to this attachment. "Even the speculations 
 are, in some secondary aspects, improved through the beneficial 
 effect of the improved feelings; and might have been more so, if, 
 by a rare good fortune, the object of his attachment had been 
 aualified to exercise as improving an influence over him in- 
 tellectually as morally, and if he could have been contented with 
 something less ambitious than being the supreme moral legislator 
 and religious pontiff of the human race.” 
 
 There is a strong resemblance here to Mill*s own rela- 
 tions with Mrs. Taylor, who later became his wife. Both of 
 these affairs were on a high spiritual plane, with qualities 
 somewhat Platonic, and in both men the attitude was, in many 
 
 1 
 
 respects .essentially a religious one. Mill says of Mrs. Taylor: 
 "Even the merely intellectual needs of my nature 
 suffice to make me hope that I may never out -live the companion 
 who is the profoundest and most far-sighted and clear-sighted 
 thinker I have ever known, as well as the most consummate in 
 
 1 
 
 For these quotations concerning Mrs. Taylor I am 
 indebted to Miss Leah Fullenwi der 1 s paper on Mill and Mrs. 
 
 Taylor. 
 

 
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-30 
 
 practical wisdom. I do not wish that I were so much her equal 
 
 as not to he her pupil, hut I would gladly he more capable than 
 
 I am of thoroughly appreciating and worthily reproducing her 
 
 admirable thoughts”^ and: "Were I hut capable of interpreting to 
 
 the world one half of the great thoughts and noble feelings 
 
 which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater 
 
 benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from anything that I 
 
 can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled 
 
 wisdom;” and again: ”If mankind continue to improve, their 
 
 spiritual history for ages to come will be the progressive work- 
 
 2 
 
 ing out of her thoughts and realization of her conceptions.” 
 
 This is the attitude of a religieux toward the prophet 
 3 
 
 of his faith, and is in accord with the theories of Comte, when 
 
 he gives women the guardianship of man's moral nature — when he 
 
 declares that to her is entrusted the moral providence of the 
 4 
 
 Grand Etre. Mill, then, like Comte himself, exemplifies in 
 his personal life this one of the Positivist doctrines, and, 
 although it would be hard to prove that he was influenced therein 
 by his contact with Positivism, nevertheless, this resemblance 
 between the two philosophers is striking. 
 
 Mill also sounds a Positivist note in his reference 
 
 1 
 
 Mill. J. S., Letters. II. p. 369. 
 
 2 
 
 Dedication to On Liberty. 
 
 3 
 
 This idea of Mrs. Taylor's place in Mill's religion 
 was brought out by Prof. S. P. Sherman in a lecture, October 6, 
 1921. 
 
 4 
 
 See Introduction. 
 
31- 
 
 to the death of his wife. He says in his Autobiography : 1 
 "But because I know that she would have wished it, I endeavour 
 to make the best of what life I have left, and to work on for 
 her purposes with such diminished strength as can be derived 
 from thoughts of her, and communion with her memory." The last 
 phrase is redolent of the Positivist religion. 
 
 Inasmuch as Mill*s influence upon the thought of the 
 
 time was very great, the estimate which he made of Positivism 
 
 was one which was adopted by a considerable group of radical 
 
 thinkers. In reply to a letter from Barbot de Ch^ment, a 
 
 French captain of artillery, who writes to him for names of Comte 
 
 English disciples and to learn his own judgment of the matter, 
 
 2 
 
 he makes the following statement: 
 
 "II y a en effet en Angleterre un certain nombre 
 d'individus qui ont connaissance des ecrits de M. Comte et qui en 
 font, a plusiers £gards, un grand cas. Mais je ne connais ici 
 personne qui accepte l’ensemble de ses doctrines ni que l'on 
 puisse regard er comme son disciple; a commencer par moi, qui 
 a suivi sa carriers des ses premieres publications , ot qui ai 
 plus fait peut-etre que tous les autres pour regard re son nom et 
 sa reputation." 
 
 It is, accordingly, worth while to give some attention 
 to the opinion which he expresses of the value of Comte’s system. 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Autobiography , p. 240. 
 
 2 
 
 Mill, Letters . I, p. 182. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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32 ' 
 
 Mill admired Comte for the originality of his mind. 
 n It is long," he writes in his diary under date of January 21, 
 1854,^ "since there has been an age of which it could he said, 
 as truly as of this, that nearly all the writers, even the good 
 ones, were hut ap pliers of ideas borrowed from others. Among 
 those of the present time I can think only of two (now that 
 Carlyle has written himself out, and become a mere commentator 
 on himself) who seem to draw what they say from a source within 
 themselves: and to the practical doctrines and tendencies of 
 both these there are the gravest objections. Comte, on the 
 Continent; in England (ourselves excepted) I can only think of 
 Rusk in." 
 
 In general, however, he accepts the philosophy but re- 
 jects the social and religious superstructure. He himself ex- 
 presses his position concisely in the above-mentioned letter to 
 Barbot de Ch^ment : 
 
 n J*admets en general la partie logique de ses doctrines, 
 ou en d’autres mots, tout ce qui a rapporte a la methode et a 
 
 la philosophie des sciences J'admets en grande partie la 
 
 / / / 
 
 critique de ses devanciers, et les bases generales de la theorie 
 historique du developpement humain, sauf les divergences de detail. 
 Quant a la religion, qui, comme vous le savez sans doute, pour 
 lui comme pour tout libre penseur est un grand obstacle aupres 
 ducommun de mes compatriot es , c’est la sans contredit que mes 
 opinions sont le plus pr^s de celles de M. Comte. Je suis 
 parfaitement d 'accord avec lui sur la partie negative de la 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Letters f II, p. 361. 
 

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-33- 
 
 question, et dans la partie affirmative, je soutiens comme lui 
 que l'idee de l f ensemble de humanity represent ee surtout par 
 lea esprits et les caracteres d'elite, passes, presents, et a 
 venir, peut devenir, non seulement pour les personnes except ionnelles 
 mais pour tout le monde, l'objet d'un sentiment capable do rem- 
 plaoer avec avantage toutes les religions actuelle^ soit pour les 
 besoins de coeur, soit pour ceux de la vie sociale, cette verite, 
 d'autres l'ont sentie avant M. Comte, mais personne que je sache 
 no l*a si nettement posee ni se puissament soutenue. 
 
 "Restent sa morale et sa politique, et la dessus Je 
 dois avouer mon dissentiment presque total." 
 
 It is in his work "Comte and Positivism" that Mill 
 explains clearly and in detail his position with regard to the 
 philosophy, polit ioue . and religion* The Fhilosophy Positive 
 in the main he finds good. That part of it dealing with the 
 law of three states, he regards as the contribution distinctly 
 Comtian, and also the point of most value in the philosophy. 
 
 Comte claimed to bring the science of sociology to the positive 
 state, but Mill believes that that had already been partly 
 accomplished, and that Comte *s work was in "discovering or proving, 
 and pursuing to their consequences, those of its truths which are 
 fit to form the connecting links among the rest."'*’ Up to this 
 point. Mill is in accord with the French philosopher, but the 
 diversity of their opinions begins to show when Comte advocates 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Comte and Positivism , p. 52. 
 

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•34- 
 
 as a principle that the liberty of the mind should he limited 
 
 by the "end and purpose of positive science" 1 2 3 4 5 which ie "as much 
 
 satisfaction to the essential inclinations of our intelligence, 
 
 as ie consistent with the degree of exactitude commanded by the 
 
 2 
 
 aggregate of our practical wants." In other words, the search 
 
 after truth is to be subordinated to "the essential inclinations 
 
 3 
 
 of our intelligence." This, according to Mill, is the principle 
 which is responsible for the perversions of Comte's later works. 
 Among the "essential inclinations of our intelligence," Comte 
 includes the predilection for unity and harmony, and our feelings 
 
 4 
 
 of taste, and here he departs from strict rationalism to 
 
 aestheticism, whither Mill cannot follow him. 
 
 Mill's objections to the sociology of Comte are founded, 
 
 for the most part, on their violation of the principles of 
 
 liberty and equality. To Comte, the doctrine of unlimited 
 
 liberty of the conscience has its place only as an instrument 
 
 of attack upon the old social system. In the Positive state, 
 
 it would cease to exist— just as there is no liberty of con- 
 
 5 
 
 science in physics, chemistry, and astronomy. The spiritual 
 power, to which Comte granted so much authority, being composed 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Comte and Positivism, p. 59. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., p. 61. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., p. 62. 
 
 4 
 
 Ibid., p. 61 
 
 5 
 
 Ibid., p. 74. 
 
-35- 
 
 of philosophers, which wore to he experts on moral questions, 
 would become a despotism, and to this Mill could not consent. 
 
 He refers to it in his book on Liberty :^ 
 
 "Some of those modern reformers who have placed themselves 
 in strongest opposition to the religions of the past, have been 
 noway behind either churches or sects in their assertion of the 
 right of spiritual domination: M. Comte, in particular, whose 
 social system, as unfolded in his Systems de Politique Pos it ive a 
 aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) 
 a despotism of society over the individual surpassing anything 
 contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid discipli- 
 narian among the ancient philosophers," 
 
 £ 
 
 Again, in Comt e and Pos it ivism , he says of Comte: 
 
 "He demands a moral and intellectual authority charged with the 
 duty of guiding men's opinions and enlightening their consciences; 
 a Spiritual Power whose judgements on all matters should deserve, 
 and receive, the same universal respect, and deference which is 
 paid to the united judgement of astronomers in matters of 
 
 astronomy. The undisputed authority — will be possessed 
 
 on the great social questions by positive Philosophers." 
 
 Mill believes that some unorganized authority by 
 philosophers is natural and good, but that a spiritual despotism 
 by either clergy or philosophers is undesirable. An organized 
 spiritual authority is not consistent with the nature of 
 spiritual power. If all are not in accord with it, it is hurt- 
 
 1 
 
 Mill. Liberty, p. 76. 
 
 £ 
 
 Mill, Comte and Positivism , p. 96. 
 
1 
 
- 36 - 
 
 ful, and if all are in accord, it is unnecessary. He believes 
 that philosophers can exert great authority as educators without 
 being organized , and tint philosophers should not govern except 
 in a purely advisory capacity,'!' 
 
 Mill also objected to Comte’s rejection of the doctrine 
 
 of equality, and his organization of society into definite 
 
 classes, as well as designation of political economy as unscien- 
 
 2 
 
 tific, unpositive, and a branch of metaphysics. 
 
 He pointed out that the fons errorum of Comte’s later 
 works is "his inordinate demand for 'unity’ and ’systematization.*" 
 To it is traceable the mistakes of his ethical system, which 
 required that the test of all conduct should be the motive which 
 prompted it, and which made all conduct either moral or wrong, 
 leaving no room for a neutral region of unmorality. He demanded 
 but one object in conduct— to make altruism predominate over 
 egoism by using every means to "deaden the personal passions 
 
 desuotude." This led to asceticism and mortification of the 
 3 
 
 body. Mill asks: 
 
 "Why is it necessary that all human life should point 
 to but one object, and be cultivated into a system of means to 
 a single end? May it not be the fact that mankind, who after 
 all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of 
 happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions 
 required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Letters . 
 
 2 
 
 Mill. Comte and Positivism, pp, 78-60. 
 3 
 
 Ibid . . pp. 137-149. 
 
f 
 
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-37— 
 
 of the reet his only object, and allows himself no personal 
 
 pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of his faculties? 
 
 The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted 
 
 to when high purposee require it, but is it the ideal perfection 
 
 of human existence? M. Comte sees none of these difficulties." 1 2 
 
 We have seen above that Mill approves of the Religion 
 
 of Humanity in general, and upholds the idea of a religion without 
 
 a God. In doing this he defines the conditions necessary to 
 
 2 
 
 constitute a religion, as follows: 
 
 1. "A creed, or conviction claiming authority over the 
 whole of human life." 
 
 2. "A belief or set of beliefs, deliberately adopted, 
 respecting human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly 
 acknowled ges that all his actions ought to be subordinate." 
 
 3. "A sentiment connected with this creed, to give it 
 this authority. It is a great advantage (though not absolutely 
 
 indispensable) that this sentiment should crystalize around 
 
 a concrete object; if possible a really existing one, though, in 
 all the more important cases only ideally present." 
 
 These conditions are fulfilled in the Religion of 
 Humanity, but there are points in it to which Mill objects. The 
 most important of them is the cultus which was attached to it. 
 
 He admits that there can be no religion without a cultus or "set 
 of systematic observances, intended to cultivate and maintain the 
 religious sentiment," but those prescribed by Comte are so 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Comte and Positivism, pp. 141-142. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., p. 133. 
 
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-38- 
 
 minutely regulated that they become ridiculous. 
 
 "There is nothing really ridiculous in the devotional 
 practises which M. Qomte recommends towards a cherished memory 
 or an ennobling ideal, when they come unprompted from the depths 
 of the individual feeling," he maintains; "but there is something 
 ineffably ludicrous in enjoining that everybody shall practise them 
 three times daily for a period of two hours , not because his 
 feelings require them, but for the premeditated purpose of getting 
 his feelings up."' 1 ' 
 
 As has been stated above, many of the absurdities of 
 Comte’s later writings, all of which Mill rejects, come, he believes, 
 from the inordinate desire for unity and regulation. This leads 
 him back to the state Fetishism, which is one of the states which 
 
 he supposes humanity to have passed through long ago. 
 
 2 
 
 "It is important," says Comte, "that the domain of 
 fiction should become as systematic as that of demonstration, 
 in order that their mutual harmony may be conformable to their 
 respective destinations, both equally directed tov ards the con- 
 tinual increase of unity , personal and social." Accordingly, 
 he creates the Grand Fetiche, which is the earth, and makes 
 Space an object of adoration, representing Fatality. "The final 
 unity disposes us to cultivate sympathy by developing our 
 gratitude to whatever serves the Grand Etre. It must dispose 
 us to venerate the Fatality on which reposes the whole aggregate 
 
 1 
 
 Mill. Comte and Positivism, pp. 151-153. 
 
 2 
 
 Quoted in Mill’s Comte and Posi t ivism . pp. 193-194. 
 
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 of our existence,” 
 
 This passion for unity was carried even to the point of 
 the cultivation of a superstitious reverence for sacred numbers, 
 such as the number 7, because "it determines the largest group 
 which we can distinctly imagine," and this number was to be made 
 the basis for numeration wherever possible, in spite of its 
 inconvenience. It also led him to the formation of an idiotic 
 system for the correction of his own literary style. Mill 
 quotes 1 the following "plan for all compositions of importance" 
 from the Synthase Subject ive : 
 
 "'Every volume really capable of forming a distinct 
 treatise* should consist of 'seven chapters, besides the intro- 
 duction and the conclusion; and each of these should be composed 
 of three parts.* Each third part of a chapter should be 
 divided into 'seven sections, each composed of seven groups of 
 sentences, separated by the usual break of line. Normally formed, 
 the section offers a central group of seven sentences, preceded 
 and followed by three groups of five: the first section of each 
 part reduces to three sentences three of its groups, symmetrically 
 placed; the last section gives seven sentences to each of its 
 extreme groups. These rules of composition make prose approach 
 to the regularity of poetry, when combined with my previous re- 
 duction of the maximum length of a sentence to two manuscript or 
 five printed lines, that is, 250 letters.'" 
 
 1 
 
 Mill, Op. cit. , p. 198. 
 
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 Such nonsense did not diminish the respect which Mill 
 retained for the really valuable contributions to thought made 
 by Comte in his earlier works. He regarded them as the signs 
 of the "melancholy decadence of a great intellect," and did all 
 in hie power to spread the more important of his doctrines, 
 and to aid him personally. 
 
 This last he had an opportunity to do in 1843, when 
 Comte’s position with the Polytechnic School, where he was em- 
 ployed as examiner, was endangered. Mill offered financial 
 assistance, in case it should be needed, but Comte declined, 
 saying that he would accept assistance from the wealthy men of 
 his followers because he regarded it the duty of such men to 
 minister to the wants of philosophers, but that he did net bolieve 
 that philosophers with small means should have to help each other 
 in this way. In July of 1844, Comte was dismissed from the 
 Polytechnic and was in great distress. He appealed to Mill, with 
 the same reservation as before, and Mill interested George Grote, 
 the historian, and Sir William Molesworth, who had been until 
 1837 the editor of the London and Westminster Review , of which 
 Mill was the real, if not the ostensible, editor. These two, 
 
 with Raikes Currie, made up Comte’s deficiency for the first two 
 
 1 
 
 years, but refused to continue the assistance, because they did 
 not believe that the philosopher was making sufficient effort to 
 help himself. Comte, thereupon, wrote to Mill a statement of 
 
 1 
 
 Bain, J. Mill . pp. 73-75. 
 

 
-41— 
 
 his theory that, "in default of the government, it is the duty 
 of the rich individuals to subscribe their money to enable philoso- 
 phers to live and carry on their speculations." 1 Mill did not 
 agree with this theory, but showed the letter to Grote and Moles- 
 
 worth. 
 
 Grote, however, was not as great an admirer of Comte as 
 
 was Mill. He saw even less of value in the sociological volumes 
 
 than did the latter, who admired Comte's distinction between social 
 
 Statics and Dynamics, and his Historical method. Grote especially 
 
 disliked the repression of liberty in the social doctrines of the 
 
 Frenchman. Accordingly, when Comte began to claim financial aid 
 
 as a right, he did not wish to continue it, although Mill renewed 
 
 the appeal in 1848. Mill himself, at this time, in reply to a 
 
 circular letter from Emile Lit tr£, requesting financial assistance 
 
 for Comte, sent him 250 francs. In the accompanying letter, he 
 
 explained that he agreed on the theory of the positive method, 
 
 but differed on the manner of applying it to social questions. 
 
 "La plupart de ses opinions," he explains, "sont d iametralement 
 
 £ 
 
 opposees aux miennes." 
 
 George Grote, the author of the History of Groece . and 
 a number of works on philosophy and politics, had been associated 
 with Mill from about 1820. As one of the promoters, with Mill, 
 of the London University, he made a consistent stand against the 
 chair of philosophy of that institution being occupied by a minister 
 
 1 
 
 Mill. Letters. I. p. 132. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid . , I, p. 139. 
 
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42 
 
 of religion, opposing the appointment of James Martineau to that 
 
 1 
 
 position. His personal acquaintance with Comte began in 
 January 1840, at the time of a visit to Paris. He met him 
 again in Paris in 1844, where Comte was, at that time, little 
 known. The Philosophie Po s i t i ve had been recently published and 
 had made a great impression upon Grote, whose wife writes of 
 this visit: 
 
 "Mr. Grote found M. Comte’s conversation original and 
 
 instructive, and on returning to London, he became active in 
 
 promoting the circulation of M. Comte’s works, as being calculated 
 
 to expand the circle of speculative investigation among English 
 2 
 
 students." 
 
 As to the doctrines, Grote respects the method but dis- 
 agrees on the speculations on sociology and the progress of 
 society. He thinks that Comte over-emphasi zes fetishism and 
 polytheism, but agrees on the law of three states. "As to moral 
 and social phenomena," Grote believes, "he recognises no standard 
 except his own taste and feeling, which has been derived from 
 
 Catholicism." As a historian, Grote does not trust Comte’s 
 
 3 
 
 knowledge of facts in history. 
 
 Mill recommended the study of Comte’s works to those 
 
 with whom he was personally in contact, and to those with whom he 
 
 4 
 
 was in correspondence. In 1843 he wrote to Bulwer Lytton: 
 
 1 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography. Article on Grote. 
 2 — 
 
 Mrs. Grote. Life of George Grote, pp. 157-158. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., pp. 203-205. 
 
 4 
 
 Mill, Letters, I, p. 124. 
 

 
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 "You would find Comte well worth your better knowledge. I do 
 not almys agree in his opinions, but as far as I know he seems 
 to me by far the first speculative thinker of the age.” I have 
 been able to find nothing to indicate that Eulwer Lytton actually 
 read Comte, however. 
 
 It was through John Stuart Mill that Alexander Bain, 
 
 Professor of Logic and English Literature at Aberdeen University, 
 
 became interested in Positivism. John Robertson, who assisted 
 
 Mill in the editorship of the London and Westminster Revi ew for 
 
 about three years, encouraged Bain to write to Mill on his own 
 
 account. The answer was received September El, 1841. In the 
 
 second letter. Mill spoke of his Logic „ and asked: "Have you ever 
 
 looked into Comte*s Cour de Philosophie Posit ive ? He makes some 
 
 mistakes, but on the whole, I think it very nearly the grandest 
 
 1 
 
 work of this age." The following year Bain, in order to 
 
 improve his knowledge of French, decided to read Comte f s book 
 for himself, having derived his first definite impression from 
 a review of it in the Blackwood. Mill wrote to him in this year 
 that he had refrained from putting the finishing touches to 
 his Logic until he had read the sixth volume of the Philosophie 
 Positive , which was just out. In 1843 Bain made a visit to 
 
 London. 
 
 "Arriving in London on the 30th of May," he writes, 
 
 "I obtained a lodging in Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road 
 .••••••.. I went without delay to the India House to Mill and got 
 
 1 
 
 Bain, Autobiography, pp. 111-112. 
 

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 the first volume of Comte, which 1 "began forthwith.” 
 
 He finished five volumes in London and got the sixth 
 
 to take to Aberdeen* He made an abstract as he went along, and 
 
 constantly discussed the work with Mill, learning many of the 
 
 latter's ideas of the importance of the doctrines* 
 
 At Neil Arnott's weekly dinners there in London, there 
 
 was some discussion of Comte. "Arnott himself knew something 
 
 of Comte, and, moreover, had classified the sciences upon the same 
 
 general plan; while, at a future time (1860), he skotched an 
 
 exhaustive and detailed classification, very much on Comte's lines, 
 
 for the science degrees of the University of London." G. H. Lewes, 
 
 who came to these dinners, was reading Comte also. At this time 
 so far 
 
 Bain had /concurred with the theories in the Philosophic Positive 
 
 that Mill, in writing to Comte, mentioned him as one of his 
 
 1 
 
 assiduous students. 
 
 Upon his return to Aberdeen, Bain communicated his 
 Positivist theories to the members of a small society there, of 
 which he was a member. They obtained Comte's complete work and 
 divided it up among them for study. 
 
 "Such studies had, no doubt, the effect of marring the 
 orthodoxy of all concerned," writes Bain, "although it was im- 
 possible to avoid giving indications that in those days were cal- 
 culated to bring the individual students into trouble. Never- 
 theless, the society allowed itself to be mentioned by Mill to 
 Comte as one of the centres of Positivism." 
 
 1 
 
 Bain, Autobiography, pp. 145-154. 
 

In December of that year, Bain read a paper to the 
 
 Philosophical Society on the Classification of the Sciences, 
 
 based upon Comte. The society, and particularly John Stuart 
 
 Elackie, expressed strong disapproval, Blackie's words being, 
 
 "my whole soul revolts at this classification." 1 
 
 In 1847 Bain went to London, and there finished his 
 
 Astronomy , following the plan given by Auguste Comte in his 
 
 popular tret is, and making an acknowledgement to that effect 
 
 in the preface. In 1849 his Psychology and Logic were composed 
 
 and in the latter, for the section on Induction, he rested 
 
 exclusively upon Mill, except that he substituted for his Book 
 
 VI (the logic of the moral and political sciences), the logic 
 
 of the sciences generally, according to the scheme cf Auguste 
 £ 
 
 Comte. During a visit to Paris in 1851, Bain met Comte and 
 
 Littre, as well as a pupil of the former, Alexander Williamson, 
 
 3 
 
 afterwards Professor of University College. 
 
 Mill's influence for Positivism was by no means con- 
 fined to these few men whom I have mentioned. It extended to 
 a larger circle than it is possible to estimate, through the 
 medium of his writings. Mill was also a great advocate of 
 discussion, and was usually surrounded by a group of disciples. 
 During the 50' s a number of young men came to London from Oxford 
 
 1 
 
 Bain, Autobiography, pp. 156-158. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid, pp. 194-202. 
 
 3 
 
 Bain, Op. cit.. pp. 223-224. 
 
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-46 
 
 and joined this circle of those who sat at the feet of the 
 great philosopher, receiving from him Positivism* colored hy 
 his own views on the subject, so that his estimate of the system 
 came to he rather generally accepted among those who studied it 
 at all. 
 
-47 
 
 II 
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 The members of the younger group of English Positivists 
 seem to have obtained their first contact with the works of Comte 
 at the universities, especially at Oxford, Betv/een the years 
 1848 and 1859, J, Cotter Morison, Frederic Harrison, and John 
 Morley were students there, while Leslie Stephen was at Cambridge, 
 After leaving the universities, these men went to London, where 
 they came in contact with those groups of Positivists centered 
 about George Eliot and John Stuart Mill, 
 
 A very interesting figure in connection with the Oxford 
 of that day was Richard Congrove, a pupil of Dr. Arnold, and 
 tutor at the University from 1848 to 1854. Just as John Stuart 
 Mill is representative of the clear, critical type of mind, which 
 siezed upon the best of the philosophical elements in Positivism, 
 discarding the rest, so Richard Congreve, although clear-thinking 
 at firet, became more and more absorbed in the mystical side of 
 Comte, until he reached a kind of fanaticism, Frederic Harri- 
 son telle us that he was not a scholar. Tut that he had a wide, 
 systematic grasp of history, and that "his knowledge of the world, 
 of general culture, of politics, was masculine and broad," "His 
 strong, ambitious, but rather arrogant nature could not but 
 impress younger men," but he did not inspire hero-worship. At 
 Oxford, Harrison says, "he worked hard, and was genial and good- 
 natured. What a transformation have I witnessed in forty years 
 to the arrogant egotist, the fierce intriguer, and the pitiless 
 
-48- 
 
 misanthr opist that ambition, vanity, and fanaticism have made the 
 Dr. Congreve of 1892 — the would-be High Priest of Humanity — 
 the restless dreamer after a sort of back-parlour Popedom. I 
 could not believe that human nature could undergo such a trans- 
 formation in the same man, if I had not been a close witness of 
 the whole process."^ In 1855 Congreve resigned his fellowship 
 at Oxford, in order to devote himself to the spread of the teach- 
 ings of Positivism. In the work carried on in Chapel Street, he 
 took a leading part. Later he refused to accept the authority 
 of Pierre Lafitte, Comte’s successor, and caused a split in the 
 
 ranks of the Positivists. Frederic Harrison and his party formed 
 
 2 
 
 a separate society at Newton Hall, Fetter Lane. 
 
 Frederic Harrison was brought up in the Church of 
 
 England by parents with High Church leanings. Itfhen he was a 
 
 youth, he had great faith in prayer and used to practise it for 
 
 the mosttrivial and personal things. Later he came to look 
 
 back at this as relaxing to morality and degrading. "The 
 
 essentially human and special evil,” he says, "caused by our 
 
 bad acts, is ignored when it becomes a personal matter between 
 
 self and God." Never, however, did he have a very lively in- 
 
 3 
 
 terest in the future life. 
 
 At Oxford, he came in contact with Richard Congreve, 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, Autobiography . I, pp. 82-85. 
 
 2 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, Article on Congr eve , Vol. VI, 
 
 p. 938. 
 
 3 
 
 Harrison, Op . Cit .. I, p. 39. 
 

 
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-49- 
 
 who must have been studying Comte at the time, although Harrison 
 says that in 1649 Comte was little known in England and that he 
 does not believe that Congreve knew much about him until later, 
 Harrison tells of the band of "Jumbo" (which was composed of 
 Basely, Bridges, Thor ley, and himself) reading an article by 
 Brewster on Comte (Edinburgh Review, July, 1838), and then an- 
 nouncing to their colleagues that Congreve's system of ideas was 
 derived from Comte, However, they did not question Congreve 
 definitely on the matter, and the latter never once, during their 
 whole time at Oxford, referred to Comte in conversation with them. 
 Harrison expressly states that none of them became Congreve's 
 disciples at that time. 
 
 He first heard of Comte while there at Oxford, from 
 Littre's book, given to him by Charles Cookson, and from Mill's 
 Logic , In an essay he expressed the opinion "that the future of 
 Philosophy seems destined to be the Positive Philosophy." 
 "Congreve," he says, "tried to get from me what I meant. I 
 had not meant anything very definitely, and I declined to be 
 more specific. I thought I meant the philosophy of Bacon, 
 
 Hume, Mill, and Comte in a general sense — the philosophy of 
 experience and logic." 1 
 
 In 1855, at the age of twenty-four, Harrison decided 
 not to take Holy Orders, owing to a strong feeling, which he had 
 developed, of antagonism to the Established Church as a political 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Op. cit . , I, pp. 85-87. 
 

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 and social scandal. He was closely associated with Dr. Congreve, 
 Dr. Bridges, Beesly, the Lushingtons, and other Oxford friends, 
 and a frequent hearer of F. D. Maurice, and the men connected 
 with the Working Men’s College. He was also being influenced 
 by the opinions of "Carlyle, Kingsley, Goldwin Smith, Mill, Bright, 
 ' and the disestablishment orators and organs." He writes to his 
 mother at this time; 1 * 3 
 
 "Nor, lastly, do I find among cur olorgy that clear 
 conviction, that true wisdom, which is needed in one who assumes 
 to settle and explain religious questions — to comfort our dis- 
 tresses — to clear up our perplexities. A church must teach — 
 bind — regulate. I mus t find one that will flier, regler, 
 rallier (Auguste Comte)J." 
 
 It was at this period that he passed "from ardent and 
 
 unhesitating Christian belief to the liberal lat i tud inarianism, 
 
 and ultimately to scientific Positivism." By this time he had 
 
 read "with deepest enthusiasm" Harriet Martineau’s Pos i t ive 
 
 Philosophy . He had also read "Dante, F. D. Maurice , John Henry 
 
 Newman, Francis Newman, C. Kingsley, J. S. Mill, Carlyle, Comte, 
 
 -- plato, Aristotle, and +he Biblo — with almost equal interest 
 
 2 
 
 and profit." And Comte seemed to explain them all. 
 
 In this year (1855) he had an interview with Comte 
 
 3 
 
 himself, which he describes as follows: 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, 0£. cit . . I, pp. 146-147. 
 
 E 
 
 Ibid., pp. 97-106. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., pp. 97-99. 
 
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I replied , 
 
 51 
 
 "He asked me what I knew of his writings. 
 
 Miss Martineau's translation, of which I could follow only the second 
 (historical and sociological ) volume, and that I still called 
 myself a Christian. He asked me what were my studies; and 
 finding that I had done almost nothing in science and little in 
 mathematics, he said ‘that accounted for my mental condition! ’ 
 
 ..... He spoke entirely as a philosopher — much as J. S. Mill 
 
 would speak — not at all as a priest. He repudiated the sug- 
 
 gestion that he expected his followers to abandon Theism al- 
 together. He said that he had no such hankering after the Un- 
 known; hut some of those nearest to him, especially the women, 
 clung to the idea as a consolation. Nor did he condemn them; 
 hut he thought the interest in the problems of the universe would 
 gradually disappear under earthly cares and duties and abiding 
 aspirations for human good." He spoke of G. H. Lewes as "use- 
 ful but inadequate and untrustworthy." Harrison does not seem 
 
 to have looked upon Comte as infallible, at this time, for he 
 
 observes that he made the untrue statement that Mazzini did not 
 believe in God. 
 
 By 1861 Harrison was so far a Positivist in the religious 
 sense, that, on the death of Dr. -Bridges' wife, he wrote to one 
 of her friends, offering the Positivist consolation of the idea 
 of memory. "What her life was before death, an active life of 
 work in that quiet village, such her life will be after death. 
 
 I mean her memory, and all the nameless influence of her doings, 
 feelings, and thoughts, working still around her, amongst those 
 who have known her, all kept alive tenfold, a hundredfold more 
 
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-52- 
 
 distinctly and beautifully, and really, when her grave is under 
 
 the shadow of the church tower beside her sisters.” 1 
 
 During the time just after his interview with Comte, 
 
 Harrison was sometimes a visitor at Mill's (where he met Grote, 
 
 also), and was busied with the study of sciences and of Comte's 
 
 work. He became entirely in sympathy with the scheme of 
 
 historical evolution described by the latter, and found that all 
 
 that he read in "Gibbon, Ha 11am, Carlyle, Dean Milman, Michelet, 
 
 Henri Martin, Guizot, Michaud, Ranke, Heeren, or Dr. Arnold gained 
 
 new significance when seen in the light of the Positivist 
 
 2 
 
 elucidation of progressive civilization." 
 
 In 1867 the Positivist Society was founded with Con- 
 greve as president. In 1878 to 1879 Congreve seceded from 
 Lafitte, while Harrison remained, and in 1881 the Newton Hall 
 group of Positivists was formed. This and the logit ivist 
 Review , which was founded in 1893 were still in action as late 
 as 1911. 
 
 Positivism became the guiding force of Harrison's 
 
 life, and most of his works touch upon it. Together with 
 
 3 
 
 Bridges and Beesly, he translated the Politioue Positive . 
 
 He also wrote a large number of articles on the subject, which 
 were published in the Rortn ight ly Review , the Cont emporary 
 Review, the Nineteenth Century , and others, and gave many 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Ojd. cit . . I, p. 212-213. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid . . pp. 251-255. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid . , pp. 251 ff. 
 
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-53- 
 
 lectures. Of the latter, he writes: 
 
 "If the list of subjects treated seems to be extremely 
 
 various, it must be remembered that it was invariably based on 
 
 the collective synthesis of tho Positive Philosophy, on the 
 
 Calendar of Great Men, and on the general doctrines of Comte as 
 
 contained in his Polity and other books For the twenty- 
 
 five years, 1880-1904 inclusive, I generally lectured on Sundays 
 
 for about two months in each year, as well as on the special 
 
 1 
 
 meetings of the Positivist Society.” 
 
 The Religion of Humanity was an expression of Harrison's 
 
 deepest and sincerest convictions* "The central idea of 
 
 Positivism,” he writes in The Philosophy of Common Sense . "is 
 
 simply this: that, until our dominant convictions can be got into 
 
 one plane with our deepest affections and also our practical 
 
 energies — until our most sacred emotions have been correlated 
 
 with our root beliefs and also our noblest ambition,— that is, 
 
 until one great object is ever present to intellect, and to 
 
 heart, and to energy all at once - — human life can never 
 
 2 
 
 be healthy or sound." Positivism is a relat ive synthesis. 
 
 "A relative synthesis admits that absolutely, in rerum natura . the 
 Earth is an infinitesimal bubble, and Man a very feeble, casual, 
 
 and faulty, organism But re latively this Earth is to 
 
 us mites the true centre of the World, and Humanity is far the 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Ojd. cit . . I, pp. 282-283. 
 
 2 
 
 Harrison, Philosophy of Common Sense, p. 44. 
 

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-54 
 
 noblest, strongest, most humane, most permanent organism that 
 
 we can prove to inhabit it,” 1 
 
 In his acceptance of the idea of the Religion of 
 
 Humanity, Harrison was like Mill, bu.t he went far beyond the 
 
 latter in his acceptance of the cultus which went with it, as is 
 
 shown by his activity at Newton Hall, 
 
 Newton Hall was established to serve the purpose of 
 
 "school, club, and chapel — a place for education, for political 
 
 activity, and for religious communion.” Scientific training 
 
 was emphasized, for it was recognized that this was the basis of 
 
 2 
 
 the very existence of Positivism, Harrison insists that there 
 
 was no ritual nor sacerdotalism connected with this establishment, 
 
 but goes on to describe the sacraments which were celebrated there. 
 
 They were nine, as was proposed by Comte, some of them being: 
 
 "Presentation of infants. Continuation of adolescents (initiation 
 
 into systematic education). Destination to a profession. Maturity," 
 
 3 
 
 Marriage, and Funeral. Another of the rites was that of 
 Commemoration, which consisted of a pilgrimage to the home, or 
 tomb, of one of the great men on the Positivist Calendar, The 
 most important of these was that to Westminster Abbey, which took 
 place on September 5th, the anniversary of the death of Comte, 
 
 The tombs of all the great men of the Calendar buried there were 
 visited, and later a historic estimate was delivered in the 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison. Philosophy of Common Sense, p. 60. 
 
 2 
 
 Harrison, Autobiography, it, pp. 270-271. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., II, 286. 
 

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55 
 
 Chapter House, the Dining Hall, or the Jerusalem Chamber. 1 
 
 Frederic Harrison was possessed of the true missionary 
 
 spirit, and was eager to find Positivists wherever there was the 
 
 slightest possibility of there being any. He records the fact 
 
 that Mr. Wu, a student under the name of Ng Choy, secretary to 
 
 Li Hung Chang, was a Positivist, and that the Chinese minister 
 
 2 
 
 came to some of the addresses. 
 
 He calls Huxley a '’rudimentary Positivist" and quotes 
 his own words to prove it: "That a man should determine to devote 
 
 himself to the service of humanity .... that this should be, 
 in the proper sense of the word his religion .... is not only an 
 intelligible, but, I think, a laudable resolution." This in 
 spite of the fact that Huxley has been making violent attacks 
 upon the doctrines of Comte. The most famous of these attacks 
 was made in an address, delivered in Edinburgh, November 8, 1868, 
 printed in the Fortnightly Review for February 1, 1869, entitled. 
 
 On the Physical Bas is of Life . The Archbishop of York had 
 delivered a paper On the Limit s of Philosophic Inquiry the day before 
 that on which Huxley was to speak. The clergyman had attacked 
 what he called the "New Philosophy," i. e. the philosophy that 
 estimates that the limits of speculative inquiry should be those 
 of human experience, and had identified it with the philosophy 
 of Auguste Comte. Huxley replied that he and many other men 
 of science held this philosophy to be just, but insisted that it 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Autobiography . II, pp. 288-289. 
 
 2 
 
 Harrison, Op. Cit . . I, p. 330. 
 

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 -56- 
 
 should he attributed to Hume and not to Comte. 
 
 "Now, so far as I am concerned," went on Huxley, "the 
 most reverend prelate might dialectically hew M. Comte in pieces, 
 as a modern Agog, and I should 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 an- 
 tagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in ultra- 
 montane Catholicism. In fact M. Comte*s philosophy in practise 
 
 might he compendiously described as Catholicism minus Chris- 
 £ 
 
 t ianity. " 
 
 In another place in the same article, he characterized 
 
 Comte as "a French writer of fifty years later date (than HumeJ 
 
 in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigour of 
 
 thought and exquisite clearness of style of the man whom I make 
 
 hold to term the most acute thinker of the eighteenth century 
 
 3 
 
 — .even though that century produced Kant.” 
 
 In the April 1st edition of the Fortnight ly Review for 
 the same year, Congreve replied to this article, and was in 
 turn answered by Huxley, in the same periodical. This last 
 article is mentioned by Mill in a letter to Dr. Gazelles, dated 
 from Avignon, October £3, 1869: 
 
 "La repons e de M. Huxley a M. Congreve a deja psru, 
 dans le meme recueil periodiaue que la conference. 
 
 1 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 1869, Vol. II, pp. 141-142. 
 
 £ 
 
 Ibid . , p. 141. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid . 
 

 
 
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-57- 
 
 C’est une critique amere de Comte, parfoie juste, plus souvent 
 
 in juste ou exageree, et qui me parait dans son ensemble 
 
 extremement faible. Pour rend re justice a Huxley il faut se 
 
 rappeler que le volume le plus imparfait et surtout le plus 
 
 arriere de la Philosophic Positive est celui oui traite do la 
 
 1 
 
 chimie et de la biologie," 
 
 One of Huxley* s objections to Positivism is the same as 
 
 one which Mill sets forth in Comte and P'oe it i vism . i. e. the 
 
 £ 
 
 fact that Comte rejects psychology in favor of phrenology. 
 
 In spite of his many words against them. Dr. Bridges 
 finds evidence in Huxley*s biography that his ideas were not so 
 widely different from those of Comte as might be inferred from 
 the passages quoted above* 
 
 "Of the two synthetic philosophies of the nineteenth 
 century, claiming to be founded on science," says Dr. Bridges, 
 "one, that which is identified with the name of Herbert Spencer, 
 takes Cosmic Evolution for its central principle; the other, 
 that of Auguste Comte, rests on the conception of Humanity. It 
 will be seen that Huxley* s l&tor teaching lends support to 
 Comte rather than to Spencer* This point has been already 
 touched by Mr. Harrison, but it will well bear re-ins ict once." 
 
 He goes on to quote passages to demonstrate that Huxley leaned 
 towards the conception that the ethical progress of Humanity 
 
 1 
 
 Mill. Letters. II, p. £82. 
 
 2 
 
 Huxley on Hume . English Men of Letters Series, Vol. 
 
 VII, p. 52 
 
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— 58 
 
 depends, not on imitating the Cosmic Process, nor in running 
 away from it, but in c cm batting it, which is the spirit of 
 
 1 
 
 Positivism, summed up in Comte's classification of the sciences. 
 
 Another writer of whom Harrison tried very hard to make 
 
 a convert was John Ruskin, whose acquaintance he had made while 
 
 2 
 
 both were teaching in the Working Men's College about 1860. 
 
 Harrison tried to get Ruskin to study Comte, not the philosophy 
 
 or religion, but the social principles, because he believed that 
 
 they had many points in common with those of his friend. 
 
 "I never dreamed of Ruskin reading Comte himself," 
 
 3 
 
 he says, "but of his taking his ideas from me. Little did I 
 know then that John would take no ideas from the Angel Gabriel 
 himself. The father asked me to direct John to some standard 
 authorities on Political Economy. I might as well have asked 
 John to study Hints on Deerstalking , or The Art of Dancing . 
 
 He wanted no man's books, no ideas, no principles but his own. 
 
 He would make it all out for himself." Harrison maintained that 
 "the basis of the economics of Comte and of Ruskin were, if not 
 identical, distinctly parallel. Both saw that organic society 
 rested on property — but property as created by the social co~ 
 operation of Labour and Intellect, and also as being rightly 
 devoted to the good of society as a whole, and not to the enjoy- 
 ment of individuals." 
 
 Bridges, Illustrations of Positivism , pp. 451-452. 
 
 2 
 
 Cook, Biography of Ruskin, I, p. 482. 
 
 3 
 
 Harrison, Autobiography , I, p. 231. 
 

 
 
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-59- 
 
 La tar, in 1868, Harrison, still persistent, wrote him 
 a long letter, pointing out wherein Comte’s doctrines formed 
 a scientific ground for the economic theories of Ruskin. To 
 this Ruskin replied: 
 
 "I cannot now read through a severe philosophical 
 
 treatise, merely to ascertain that its author is, or was before 
 
 me, of one mind with me as to two and two’s usually making 
 
 four, nor do I care at present to ascertain wherein Comte differs 
 
 from me, which he certainly does (I hear) in some views respecting 
 
 the spiritual powers affecting animal ones I You know how 
 
 happy 1 am always to see you yourself; if you care to come so 
 
 far to tell me more about Positivism, I shall delightedly listen*"'*' 
 
 the 
 
 On religion and/theory of Subjective Immortality after 
 death he was indignant! 
 
 "If indeed these enthusiasms give you any consolation 
 
 in the loss of any person whom you care for, or the decline of 
 
 any faculty of your own (such as Turner’s or Scott's bursting 
 
 into tears as their hands ceased to obey them) Heaven forbid 
 
 2 
 
 any one should interfere with them*" 
 
 As to immortality, Ruskin *s Preface to The C rown of 
 Wild Olive indicates grave doubt in his mind on the subject of 
 a future life, and almost a feeling that the assurance that the 
 soul does not live after death gives greater value to this life, 
 than the contrary belief. 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Autobiography . I, p. 233-4. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., I, p. 233-234. 
 
-60- 
 
 In 1875-1876, some articles of Harrison's on his 
 creed were the cause of a vehement correspondence between the 
 two men. "Ruskin was passionately stirred by the very idea 
 of a religion of Humanity; and, as may be read in his Fore, 
 he used the most abusive language about men of science and of 
 everyone suspected of Evolution, Democracy, or Modern Progress." 
 
 In spite of this violent language, the friendship of the men con- 
 tinued, and there was a feeling of utmost kindliness between them. 
 In letter LXVI of Hors Rusk in prints the whole of one of his 
 personal letters to Harrison. A great deal of it is taken up 
 with good natured raillery on the subject of evolution, in which 
 Ruskin declares that he can see no improvement in roses, apples, 
 nor women since antiquity. In fact, as to the latter, he rather 
 prefers the "ductile and silent gold of ancient womanhood to the 
 resonant bronze and tinkling — not cymbal, but shall we say — 
 saucepan" of modern emancipated woman. He complains that he 
 does not find the advocates of Evolution much given to studying 
 either men, women, or roses, but perceives them mostly occupied 
 with frogs and lice, and wonders of there is a "Worshipful 
 Batrachianity -- a Divine Ped icularity. " "Your Humanity," he 
 goes on, "has no more to do with roses than with Rose-chafers 
 or other vermin; but I must really beg you not to muddle your 
 terms as well as yourhead. 'We, who have thought and studied, 1 
 do not admit that 'humanity is an aggregate of men. ' An aggre- 
 gate of men is & mob, and not 'Humanity'; and an aggregate of sheep 
 
 1 
 
 Ruskin, Eors 01s vi gera . Ill, 221 ff. 
 
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- 61 - 
 
 is a flock, and not Ovility; and an aggregate of geese is — 
 perhaps you had "better consult Mr* Herbert Spencer and the late 
 Mr* John Stuart Mill for the best modern expression." Whereupon 
 he asks Harrison’s advice on some legal ouestions, assuring him 
 that he can do more service to Humanity by answering them than 
 "by any quantity of papers on its Collective Development of its 
 Abstract Being," and adjuring him, "by all that’s positive, all 
 that’s progressive, all that’s spiral, all that’s conchoidal, and 
 all that’s evolute" to answer him. He closes by quoting some 
 devotional poetry of Sir Philip Sidney: 
 
 "Yet of thee the thankful story 
 Pilled my mouth: thy gratious glory 
 Was my ditty all the day. 
 
 Do not then, now age assaileth. 
 
 Courage, verdure, vertue faileth. 
 
 Do not leave me cast away," 
 
 suggesting that Harrison may, perhaps, apply them personally to 
 
 Mr* Comte, 
 
 But, for all his raillery, Ruskin was very near the 
 doctrines of Comte in some respects. Take for example three 
 points with regard to St. George’s Guild. The landowners were 
 to be men of independent fortune, and they were to give property 
 and their own ingenuity to + ha service* Comte, as we have 
 seen, would make capitalists the ruling power. Ruskin divides 
 the members of his guild into distinct classes, according to their 
 capacities and occupations. Comte does the same. And finally 
 Ruskin makes the second article of the vow of the guild to read 
 as follows: "I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the 
 
 majesty of its faculties, the fulness of its mercy, and the joy 
 

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-62' 
 
 of its love," Of this last, Harrison writes:"^ 
 
 "The second article is the direct negation of the 
 orthodox Christian view of the desperate wickedness of the 
 human heart and the miserable feebleness of man. Besides this, 
 the nobleness of Humanity, its majesty, mercy, and love, is in 
 a religious sense, the doctrine only of Positivists, and is 
 repudiated by most skeptics and agnostics as well as by 
 Christ ians • " 
 
 Even Ruskin perceived that this was a kind of religion 
 
 of humanity, for, in 1877, in telling how he was confronted with 
 
 the problem of the possibility of perfection in art, such as that 
 
 2 
 
 attained by Titian, without religion, he writes: 
 
 "I set myself to work out that problem thoroughly 
 in 1858, and arrived at the conclusion — which i s an entirely 
 sound one, and which did indeed alter, from that time forward, 
 the tone and method of my teaching — that human work must be 
 done honourably and thoroughly, because we are now Men; — 
 whether we ever expect to be angels, or ever were slugs, being 
 practically no matter, We are now Human creatures, and must, 
 at our peril, do Human — that is to say, affectionate, honest, 
 and earnest work.” and adds the footnote: "This is essentially 
 what my friend Mr, Harrison means (if he knew it) by his Religion 
 of Humanity, — one which he will find, when he is slightly more 
 advanced in the know'l od ge 1 of all life and thought, 1 was known 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, p. 174. 
 
 2 
 
 Ruskin, Hors, IV, p. 8. 
 
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-63- 
 
 and acted on in epochs considerably antecedent to that of modern 
 
 Evolution. " 
 
 Two other Oxford friends of this period were J. Cotter 
 Morison and John Morley. 
 
 The former was the son of the inventor of "Morison f s 
 Pills" referred to so scathingly hy Carlyle in Past and Present . 
 The elder Morison made a large fortune and settled in Paris where 
 
 /i. 
 
 Cotter obtained a knowledge of the French language and a deep 
 
 sympathy with French institutions. He v/ent to Oxford in 1650. 
 
 and made the acquaintance of Mark Pattison, John Morley, and 
 
 1 
 
 probably Beesly, and Bridges. 
 
 Morley paints a very engaging picture of him as he 
 knew him at Oxford, "at home in the saddle, skillful with the 
 foils, and an excellent boxer" — brilliant, quick, versatile, 
 and kindly. "He had 1 the art of kindling new life in our 
 spirits, and if you had anything of your own to say, you were 
 sure of quick, sincere, and brotherly response." Meredith 
 referred to him later as "a fountain of cur sweetest, quick to 
 spring, in fellowship abounding." 
 
 He wrote a life of St. Bernard, which he was preparing 
 even in those days and which "had the good fortune to gratify so 
 singular a trinity as Carlyle, Manning, and the Positivists of 
 every tinge." 2 
 
 1 
 
 Encyc loped ia Br itannica and Diet inn^ry of Hat i onal 
 Biography, Articles on Morrison. 
 
 2 
 
 Morley, John, Recollections . I, pp. 9-11. 
 

-64- 
 
 After leaving Oxford, Morison 'became one of the leading 
 Positivists and was associated with Harrison at Wewton Hall. 
 
 Towards the end of his career, however, ,he wrote " The Service 
 of Man." This hook, Morley says, "drew hot fire from orthodox 
 quarters, and, in other ways, particularly scandalized the 
 Positivist brotherhood of all their colours." 1 2 
 
 While these men were at Oxford, Leslie Stephen was at 
 Cambridge, having matriculated there in 1849. Between the 
 years 1854 and 1864 he was a don there — a very popular don 
 who took an enthusiastic interest in sports, was president of 
 the Boa Constrictor Walking Club, and did not always try to avoid 
 shocking his more staid fellow-dons. These latter could hardly 
 be persuaded that Stephen had any serious interests, although 
 he did do some reading of the heavier kind. At a later date 
 he writes, "at Cambridge, where the standard was very low, I was 
 supposed to know something about philosophy;" and added that he 
 had read Mill, Comte, Kant, Hamilton, etc. Extant note-books, 
 though written in shorthand, prove that he studied Maurice I s 
 Theologi cal Essays . Ricardo* s Principles of Politi cal Economy . 
 Butler’s Analogy . Comte’s Po s i t i v e Philosophy (finished May £8, 
 1859), and others.^ 
 
 In 1865 he decided to do more serious reading. "He 
 tackled Spinoza," says his biographer, "and he tackled Hegel, 
 though some 'long-hand* words, rising like rocks out of a sur- 
 rounding mist, suggest that Hegel was not allowed to try hie 
 
 1 
 
 Morley, John, Recollections , I, p. 12. 
 
 2 
 
 Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen , pp. 64-73. 
 
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-65- 
 
 patience long. ('In short, Hegel is in many ways little better 
 than an ass.') Comte and Strauss and Renan seem more attractive, 
 and the annotator's projects become less distinctly political. 
 
 They tend towards the history of thought: especially toward the 
 history of religious thought in modern times. To Comte in 
 particular, he paid close attention. Long afterwards he said that, 
 had he been at Oxford, he might have been a Positivist. It may 
 
 be so, but to speculate about what Leslie Stephen would have been 
 
 had he not been at Cambridge would be like speculating about a 
 
 1 
 
 Matthew Arnold who had not been at Oxford." 
 
 In 1866 in a memorandum written on his 38th birthday, he 
 seems to be suffering from lack of enthusiasm and an aim in 
 life. He mentions that he is reading Comte and attempting to 
 finish. Comte, however, was probably not responsible for this 
 melancholy mood, for a week later Stephen became engaged to one 
 of Thackeray's daughters. 
 
 For the next seven years Stephen was a correspondent 
 of the nation in New York. He wrote fortnightly letters "on 
 religious matters, of Maurice, and Stanley, of Ritualists and 
 Posit ivists . " 
 
 He counted all the Positivist group among his friends: 
 
 John Morley, Frederic Harrison, with whom he climbed the Alps, 
 
 2 
 
 Morison, G. H. Lewes, and George Eliot, whose biography he wrote. 
 
 1 
 
 Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, pp. 172-3. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., 
 
 p. 185 ff 
 
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 In 1882 he wrote to Henry Sidgwick, expressing his 
 
 1 
 
 indebtedness to Comte: 
 
 "You speak of me as exaggerating the novelty of the 
 evolutionist theory and specially by overlooking Comte. If 
 I have done so it was through carelessness of expression. The 
 fact is that I consider myself to have learnt very much from 
 Comte, and I take a higher estimate of him than most people do, 
 especially the scientific people who object to his religion. 
 
 I only think that evolutionists have made his theory workable and 
 brought it into a quasi-sci ent ific state more thoroughly than he 
 could do. But I agree that much of my morality is contained 
 in his 
 
 Stephen was an agnostic, but not a Positivist in the 
 
 strict sense of the word, although he was influenced, (according 
 
 , 2 
 to Maitland) , by Lewes and Comte more than by Spencer. He 
 
 points out that "we are all agnostics, though some people choose 
 
 3 
 
 to call their ignorance God or mystery " 
 
 On the other hand Stephen takes even his liberalism 
 
 lightly, and mocks at the free-thinkers a bit. He writes to 
 
 4 
 
 a friend: 
 
 "By the way, I actually preached a sermon the other 
 day— about Materialism! which I showed conclusively to mean 
 
 1 
 
 Maitland, Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, p. 352. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid . . p. 405-6. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., p. 287. 
 
 4 
 
 Ibid., p. 389. 
 
-67- 
 
 something quite different from what anybody supposes it to mean. 
 Really I plagiarized a bit of Comte, But the performance was 
 rather comic. It was in Moncure Conway’s old chapel. They 
 asked me for a Sunday lecture; but I found that they aimed at 
 a kind of service, singing Emerson, and taking the first lesson 
 out of Mill and the second out of Wordsworth. It was a oueer 
 caricature; but I suppose it amuses some of them. I believe 
 that I succeeded tolerably, and though I assured them (politely 
 I hope) that they could not understand a word I was saying, they 
 did not offer to object ” 
 
 And again: ^ "I think I wrote you about that wonderful 
 meeting of ’liberal thinkers,* which was got up by Conway in 
 the summer. It seems to be coming to life again — rather to my 
 disgust, to say the truth. Huxley and Tyndall are going to 
 take it up, and I shall have to join, if it is launched — Oh, 
 Lord, what bosh will be poured forth if we get the free-thinkers 
 together for a palaver!” 
 
 In strong contrast to the lighthearted Leslie Stephen, 
 was his friend John Addington Symonds, a member, like Morison and 
 Morley, of the Oxford group, although he went there several years 
 later than they. Symonds could not mock at rationalism; it cut 
 too deeply at the roots of his most cherished sentiments and 
 beliefs. Like Matthew Arnold, he felt the full sadness of the 
 new movement, a poignant, almost desperate nostalgia for the old 
 faith. This feeling was given an added pathos by the fact that 
 
 1 
 
 Maitland, Op. cit . . p. 330. 
 

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-68 
 
 he was an exile in "body, as well as spirit, from the surroundings 
 of his childhood. At the age of twenty-three his health broke 
 down and he was never well afterwards. He had to spend roost of 
 the rest of his life in Switzerland and Italy, and his literary 
 ambitions could never be realized. He died, still an exile, 
 in Rome, at the age of 53. 
 
 The Positivist influence on John Addington Symonds was 
 represented by Richard Congreve, more than any other person. It 
 began at Oxford. During his first year there he wrote to his 
 
 • 4. 1 
 
 sister: 
 
 "Do you think you could find out from Mrs. B- 
 
 where and when Mr. Congreve preaches, and whether he does preach 
 regularly? Puller is very anxious to hear him, and wants me to 
 go with him some day to London for that purpose. As the risk 
 of my conversion to Positivism is extremely small, I should 
 not mind it." 
 
 curing his first year of absence from England he met 
 
 2 
 
 Congreve in Florence, and describes at length in letters the 
 impression made upon him by that meeting: 
 
 "1 have seen much of Congreve here. Rut son and I 
 take long walks v/ith him and make him discourse. You know, 
 of course, whom I mean — the Positivist priest in London. 
 
 This is an inadequate description of the man, but it denotes him, 
 
 1 
 
 Brown, John Addington Symonds, I, 104. 
 
 2 1 
 
 Ibid., I, 296-298-299. 
 

 
 
 
 
- 69 - 
 
 E 0 is divided from Littre and Mill and Lewes, and others whom 
 the world call Comtists, by his priesthood. They take the 
 scientific side of Comte, regarding the religions as a senile 
 a ream. He hinges his theory of the future upon the new faith, 
 that shall reorganize society. I never saw a man more con- 
 fident in his own opinions under worse auspices. When 1 asked 
 him how far distant he thought the reign of Positive principles 
 might be, he answered, 'To the unbelieving, I should place it at 
 the expiration of three or four centuries; for myself, I believe 
 that our power will be established in hardly more than the same 
 number of generations.* Everything according to his notions 
 points to the silent adoption of Positive principles and the 
 irresistaole march of its unerring truth. So far he agrees with 
 the enemies in his own camp. But he goes beyond and says, 
 
 ’Men need religion; the health of Europe is decaying because 
 there is no religion; religion is necessary to Mnd ?or»i*ty to- 
 gether. Why are our nerves weak, our bodies feeble, our 
 writings aimless, our whole constitutions brittle? Because the 
 moral organization of religious faith has been dissolved, no 
 discipline exists, each man thinks as he chooses, many think 
 nothing, others are broken by a thousand doubts, literature 
 expands into useless but exciting channels, stimulus without an 
 aim keeps up continual irritation, in short, there is no centre 
 or circumference to our society. In politics the State is 
 becoming disintegrated to the very individual.' ..... I ask, 
 does he think that rositivism can supply to the affective parts 
 of man an interest sufficient to make each individual auiet in 
 
- 70 - 
 
 hie sphere, confident of the future, and vigorous for labour? 
 ’Certainly,* he answers; 'men will relinouish the immoral and 
 degraded yearning after personal immortality; science will teach 
 them not to seek for first causes like God.' Humanity then 
 will reorganize as their great mother, as that without which they 
 are nothing, to which owing everything they are hound to render 
 every service, as the source of strength, the seat of aspirations, 
 and the object of prayer. He allows that humanity can have 
 no consciousness, and when I define prayer as implying the 
 communion of two conscious beings he glides away and talks of 
 contemplation, I have asked for bread, and he has given me 
 a stone. Why not deny me bread and say, *1 have none, science 
 has petrified my store? 1 I should be more content. But to 
 offer me religion, prayer, a Church, a liturgy, a stool to kneel 
 on, a pulpit to hear sermons from, and then to bid me fix my 
 hopes upon a summum gems which i help to make — it is too 
 absurd. If I ever become a Positivist, it will be of the Mill 
 kind 
 
 Then, after a reverie anent the Christmas anthems at 
 the Cathedral at Bristol, comes a paragraph in which the 
 poignancy of his homesickness for the old spiritual as well as 
 physical associations is manifest: 
 
 ”1 wish I could be home again at Christmas, free from 
 Congreve, and the Sistine Chapel, with a child's belief in 
 angels. How they hurried in the Gloria in Excelsis, after 
 the low symphony, until the whole church rustled with their 
 swift descending squadrons.” 
 

 
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-71 
 
 Throughout the life of Symonds echoes and re-echoes the 
 agony of hie scepticism and the conflict of the poet with the 
 man of reason within him* It paralyzes him. 
 
 TT I wish and cannot will," he wrote in his diary.^ 
 
 "To emulate things nobler than myself is my desire. But I cannot 
 get beyond — create, originate, win heaven by prayers end faith, 
 have trust in God, and concentrate myself upon an end of action. 
 Sceptiem is my spirit. In my sorest needs I have had no actual 
 faith, and have said to destruction, ‘Thou art my sister. 1 
 To the skirts of human love I have clung, and I cling blindly. 
 
 But all else is chaos — a mountain chasm filled with tumbling 
 mists; and whether there be Alps, with flowers and streams below, 
 and snows above, with stars or sunlight in the sky, 1 do not see. 
 The mists sway hither ani thither, showing me now a crag and now 
 a pine — nothing else. 
 
 "Others see, and rest, and do. But I am broken, boot- 
 less, out of tune 
 
 "I want faith. 'Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde 
 trop vieux . ' " 
 
 In another place, he declares that if all the world 
 
 felt this misery of doubt and consciousness of the vanity of all 
 
 things, "a simultaneous suicide might be expected," and that this 
 
 E 
 
 conclusion is implied by Schopenhauer. 
 
 Again: "But it oppresses me just as much if I try to 
 
 1 
 
 Brown, 0£. cit . . I, 320-321. 
 
 £ 
 
 Ibid.. I, 403. 
 

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72- 
 
 imagine no God, as if I state the absurdity of a God emerging 
 
 from somnolence into world -act ivity. I wish I could embrace 
 
 1 
 
 Positivism as a creed.” 
 
 Even his doubt, however, brings him an occasional 
 
 moment of spiritual exaltation: 
 
 "At times this very disbelief appears to me as an 
 
 illumination and a martyrdom, because I know that it has not been 
 
 brought upon me by the desire to elude the law of God, and 
 
 2 
 
 because it is actually painful." 
 
 He spoke with his friend Professor Jowett about 
 Positivism, asking him: 
 
 "Do you think any young men get good from Comte?" 
 
 "Yes," was the reply, "in a modified way; it satisfies 
 
 them to find a system, repudiating dogma and basing morality on 
 
 3 
 
 an independent footing." 
 
 Symonds* biographer diagnoses his case as a matter of 
 
 ill health, combined with a determination to obtain absolute 
 
 4 
 
 knowledge — to accept nothing relative. One might conclude 
 that such a disposition must in the ond reject the Positive rela- 
 tive synthesis. It is not this, however, which prevents him 
 from embracing the Religion of Humanity, for he is finally forced 
 
 1 
 
 Brown, Ojo. cit . . II, 42. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., I, 403. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., I, 334. 
 
 4 
 
 Ibid., II, 57. 
 

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73' 
 
 to accept a relative view of things. It is the idea of 
 Humanity itself. 
 
 "The only sure thing," he says, "is that we have to 
 live and have to die — why either we do not now know; if we come 
 to know, well . ... hut meanwhile we ought to be able to get on 
 without it. Least of all ought we to rely upon an unproved 
 
 bribe and unproved deterrent for right action This is not 
 
 Comtism. The miserable spectre of humanity is quite d_e trop . 
 
 He calls this the Grand Etre, doesn't he?" 
 
 After a certain mystical exp er ience^dur ing an illness, 
 Symonets found peace and stability in a way which reminds one 
 of Carlyle and Arnold. He closed his Schopenhauer and opened 
 his Goethe. 
 
 "So then, having rejected dogmatic Christianity in all 
 its forms. Broad Church Anglicanism, the gospel of Comte, Hegel's 
 superb identification of human thought with essential Being, and 
 many minor nostrums offered in our times to sickening faith— 
 because none of these, forsooth, were adapted to my nature — 
 
 I came to fraternise with Goethe, Cleanthes, Whitman, Bruno, 
 Darwin, finding that in their society I could spin my own cocoon 
 with more of congruence to my particular temperament than I 
 discerned in other believers, misbelievers, non-believers, 
 passionate believers, of the ancient and modern schools. 
 
 1 
 
 Brown, 0£. cit . . II, 107. 
 

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-74- 
 
 "Speaking simply, I chose for my motto 'To live 
 resolvedly in the Whale, the Good, the Beautiful. 1 I sought 
 out friends from divers centuries, who seemed to have arrived, 
 through their life-throes and ardent speculations, at something 
 like the same intuition into the sempiternally inscrutable as 
 I had. They helped me by their richer or riper experience, by 
 flights beyond my reach, by knowledge denied to my poor studies, 
 by audacities vtfiich thrilled the man in me. I addicted myself 
 to their society because they accepted the whole, and were not 
 trafficking or pettifogging about a portion. They threw them- 
 selves upon the world and God with simple self-devotion, seeking 
 nothing extraordinary in this life or the next, accepting things 
 as they beheld them, attempting to mould no institutions, leaving 
 the truths they had discovered to work like leaven, aiming at 
 justice and a perfect clarity of vision, discarding economics 
 and accomodations of all kinds, casting the burden of results upon 
 that of Him who called them into being, standing unterrified, 
 at ease, before time, space, circumstance, and any number of 
 sidereal systems. 
 
 ’’Because these men were so, I elected them as the 
 friends with whom my spirit chose to fraternise. From being 
 in their company I derived solace, and their wisdom, like in 
 kind, was larger than my own. It is good for the soul to 
 dwell with such superiors; just as it is also good, in daily life, 
 
 to live with so-called inferiors, to learn from them, and love 
 
 1 
 
 them • " 
 
 ^Brown, Op . cit . , II, 132-133. 
 

 
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Ill 
 
 THE PRIORY 
 
 When the younger Positivists went to London from Oxford, 
 they came into personal contact with Mill and with George Eliot, 
 each of whom seems to have been the center of a group of thinkers, 
 
 "Some two University generations before my own," writes 
 1 
 
 John Morley, "Oxford had sent to London a remarkable group of 
 disciples of Comte, This group became known to me through 
 Lewes and George Eliot, who were both of them, in a more or less 
 informal way, adherents of Comtist doctrines. Indeed, the 
 latter of the two, with much gravity, more than once assured me 
 that she saw no reason why the Religion of Humanity should not 
 have a good chance of taking root, if Congreve, its chief 
 authority and expounder in our island, had only been blessed with 
 a fuller measure of apostolic gifts. They were recognised as 
 singularly accomplished and high-minded men; they were devoted and 
 unselfish workers in a wide range of large public issues; they 
 proved peculiarly well able to hold their own in controversy." 
 
 The home of George Eliot and George Henry Lewes, known 
 as the Priory, became the gathering point for these men. 
 
 Marian Evans, later known as George Eliot, was one of 
 the sincerest and most influential followers of Comte in England 
 — influential because of her artistic ability to interpret and 
 
 1 
 
 Morley, Recollections , I, 68-69. 
 

-76 
 
 apply in her writings the doctrines to which her intellect 
 1 
 
 assented. She was always an earnest and independent thinker, 
 
 although her early religions training was orthodox. In 1641, 
 
 2 
 
 at the age of twenty-two, we find her writing in this strain: 
 
 "This is not our rest, if we are among those for whom 
 there remaineth one, and to pass through life without tribulation 
 (or, as Jeremy Taylor beautifully says, with only such a measure 
 of it as may be compared to an artificial discord in music, which 
 nurses the ear for the returning harmony) would leave us desti- 
 tute of one of the marks that invariably accompany salvation, 
 and of that fellowship in the sufferings of the Redeemer which 
 can alone work in us a resemblance to one of the most prominent 
 parts of his divinely perfect character, and enable us to obey 
 the injunction, ‘In patience possess your souls.' I have often 
 observed how, in secular things, active occupation in procuring 
 the necessaries of life renders the character indifferent to 
 trials not affecting that one object. There is an analogous 
 influence produced in the Christian by a vigorous pursuit of 
 duty, a determination to work while it is day." 
 
 The last sentence is expressive of her character through- 
 out her life, while she was a Christian, and after she became 
 a Positivist. 
 
 Shortly after this expression of Christian sentiment, 
 
 1 
 
 Cooke, G. W. , George Eliot, p. 167. 
 
 2 
 
 Cross, J. V/., George Eliot's Life . I, 63. 
 

-77- 
 
 however, the liberalism of the age began to reach her through 
 
 ( 
 
 her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray, whose brother, Charles 
 
 Hennell had published in 1838 "An Inquiry Concerning the Origin 
 
 of Christianity," a book which made a great impression upon 
 1 
 
 Marian Evans. 
 
 In 1841 she became conscious of grave doubts in her 
 mind concerning the old Christian beliefs, and lamented the fact 
 that, "while mathematics are indubitable, immutable, and no one 
 doubts the properties of a triangle or a circle, doctrines in- 
 finitely more important to man are buried in a charnel-heap of 
 
 bones over which nothing is heard tut the barks and growls of 
 2 
 
 cont ent ion. " 
 
 With the courageous desire to suit her actions to her 
 beliefs, which characterized her, she gave up going to church, 
 thereby suffering a great deal of social persecution, and pro- 
 claimed her desire to become a champion of Truth. "For my 
 part, I wish to be among the ranks of that glorious crusade that 
 is seeking to set Truth’s Holy Sepulchre free from a usurped 
 
 3 
 
 domination." 
 
 A serious break with her family was threatened as a re- 
 sult of her extreme position, and she was thrown more and more 
 with the Brays. Charles Bray's philosophy was a mixture of 
 transcendentalism and the philosophy of experience. He was an 
 
 1 
 
 Cross, 0£. oit . . 1, 67. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., I, 75. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid . , I, 77. 
 
* 
 
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 p p * 
 
 
- 78 - 
 
 ad heron t to the doctrine of necessity and an ardent believer in 
 phrenology* One expr ess ion"*" of his attitude in regard to hu- 
 manity is worth quoting as possibly bearing upon George Eliot *8 
 later inclination toward the Religion of Comte. 
 
 ’’The great body of humanity (considered as an indi- 
 vidual). with its soul, the principle of sensation, is ever fresh 
 and vigorous and increasing in enjoyment* Death and birth, the 
 means of renewal and succession, bear the same relation to this 
 body of socioty as the system of waste and reproduction do to the 
 human body; the old and useless and decayed material is carried 
 out, and fresh substituted, and thus the frame is renovated 
 
 and rendered capable of ever-increasing happiness The 
 
 minds, that is to say, the ideas and feelings of which they were 
 composed, of Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Galileo, Bacon, Locke, 
 Newton, are thus forever in existence, and the immortality of the 
 soul is preserved, not in individuals, but in the great body of 
 
 humanity To the race, though, not to individuals, all 
 
 beautiful things are preserved forever; all that is really good 
 and profitable is immortal*" 
 
 Another influence upon George Eliot at this time was 
 that of Feuerbach, who looked upon religion as a subjective 
 experience, as something identical with self-consciousness, 
 the expression of man's sense of the infinitude of his own 
 faculties. While living at the Bray's, after her father's death, 
 she translated Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, De Deo of 
 
 1 
 
 Cooke , Oj). cit . , 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 

 J 
 
 . X 
 
 f 
 
 X 
 
 X 
 
 X 
 
 f 
 
 T 
 
 ! 
 
-79- 
 
 Spinoza, and Strauss's Loben Josu . All these studies were 
 
 leading her toward the Posit ivie Philosophy which was later to 
 
 occupy so important a place in her life. 
 
 In 1851 she went to London to assist John Chapman in 
 
 the editorship of the Westminster Review , which numbered among 
 
 its contributors such writers as Mill, Grote, Spencer, and 
 
 Harriet Martineau. She lived in the Chapman home, and here, 
 
 at the fortnightly gatherings of contributors to the magazine, 
 
 which took place there, she came to know the scientific and 
 
 2 
 
 Positivist thinkers of England. The most intimate of the 
 
 friends which she made in this way were Herbert Spencer and 
 
 George Henry Lewes. Harriet Martineau also became her friend. 
 
 Miss Evans had met her in 1845 on a visit with the Brays to 
 
 3 
 
 Atherstone Hall, and now the translator of Comte made very 
 
 4 
 
 cordial advances. 
 
 A woman with Marian Evan T s active mind and strong 
 philosophical inclinations could not remain long as assistant 
 editor of such a magazine as the Westminster Review , thrown 
 socially with the thinkers which made up its contributors, 
 without becoming thoroughly acquainted with the new Positivist 
 philosophy. Mill had been writing on it; Miss Martineau was, 
 at the time, at work on a translation of it; and G. H. Lewes 
 
 1 
 
 Cooke, Ojd. Cit., 177. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., 28-29. 
 
 3 
 
 Cross, Ojo. cit., I, 94. 
 
 4 
 
 Ibid . . I, 193. 
 
-80- 
 
 1 
 
 had coma forth as an adherent. 
 
 In 1853 she identified her fortunes with those of the 
 
 latter and began living with him as his wife, a legal marriage 
 
 not being possible under English law at that time. Leslie 
 
 Stephen comments upon this step and its relation to Positivism 
 
 2 
 
 in the following manner; 
 
 "Nothing in her life, she declares, has been more 
 ’profoundly serious, 1 which means, it seems, that she does not 
 approve ‘light and easily broken ties.* In her writings, 
 indeed, her tendency is to insist upon the sanctity of the 
 traditional bonds, which, whatever their origin, are essential 
 to social welfare, and so far she agrees on this, as on many 
 points, with her friends the Positivists. Comte, though he 
 admired the Catholic doctrine of the ind issolubility of 
 marriage, discovered the necessity for making an exception which 
 happened to cover his own case. George Eliot, it seems, who 
 had never accepted the strictest doctrine, was more consistent. 
 No ; one can deny that the relation to Lewes was ’serious* enough 
 in her sense. It lasted through their common lives, and their 
 devotion to each other was unlimited, and appears only to have 
 strengthened with time." 
 
 George Henry Lewes was a singularly lively and attrac- 
 tive figure among men of letters of that day. He was early 
 
 1 
 
 Stephen, George Eliot. 42-43. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid . . 48. 
 
t 
 
 
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-81- 
 
 attracted to the study of philosophy, for at the age of 
 nineteen he regularly attended the meetings of a small meta- 
 physical society, held in the parlor of a tavern in Red Lion 
 Square, Holhorn. Here he developed a great interest in 
 Spinoza, At twenty he was giving a course of lectures on 
 philosophy. He became, at various times, a clerk in a merchant's 
 office, a medical student, and finally a man of letters. He 
 spent many years abroad, and was interested in and well-informed 
 upon a great variety of topics. From his grandfather, a 
 second-rate actor, he inherited some dramatic instinct and a 
 love for the stage, which may have been responsible for his pro- 
 pensity for doing unexpected things, Thackeray once said that 
 it "would not surprise him to meet Lewes in Piccadilly, riding 
 a white elephant. 
 
 Lewes had early become attracted to Positivism through 
 
 2 
 
 John Stuart Mill, Bain says that he met him in London in 1842 
 and that "he sat at the feet of Mill, read the Logic with 
 
 avidity, and took up Comte with equal avidity In an 
 
 article in the British and Foreign Review in 1843, on the Modern 
 Philosophy of France, he led up to Comte, and gave some account 
 of him." In 1845-1846 appeared his Biographical History of 
 Philosophy , in the preface of which he announced that "philosophy” 
 
 1 
 
 These facts from the life of Lewes are drawn from 
 Mathilde Blind's George Eliot . pp. 105-6 and 112, Cooke's George 
 Eliot, p. 49, and Leslie Stephen's George Eliot, pp. 44-45. 
 
 2 
 
 Bain, J. S. Mill . note p. 76. 
 
-82 
 
 1 
 
 was to give way before Comtek Positivism. Of this work 
 
 Harrison made the extravagant statement that "it had simply 
 
 2 
 
 killed metaphysic." 
 
 Between 1849 and 1854 he was writing for the Lead er . 
 
 among other things a series of eighteen articles on Comte f s 
 
 Positive Philosophy, by means of which he raised a considerable 
 
 3 4 
 
 sum of money for the philosopher. Harrison says of him: 
 
 "I believe that his services to the thought of his time will 
 
 one day be more valued than they are today* And amongst these 
 
 services I can never forget that he was the first writer in 
 
 England to herald the new era which dates from Auguste Comte, and 
 
 he was the first in England who sought to popularize the 
 
 Positivist scheme of thought." 
 
 Lewes, like Kill, however, was no blind follower of the 
 
 French master. He founded his philosophy upon the Philosophie 
 
 Pos it ive . but did not accept the social theories of Comte, and 
 
 attached considerable importance to psychology, which the French 
 
 5 
 
 writer rejected. Lewes, it will be seen, was at this time 
 a Positivist of the Mill type. 
 
 It must not be supposed that George Eliot took over her 
 Positivism ready-made from Lewes; she was too independent in her 
 
 1 
 
 Stephen, Op. c it . , pp. 44-45. 
 
 2 
 
 Cooke, £p. Qit . . p. 59. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid., pp. 52-53. 
 
 4 
 
 Harrison, F.. Autobiography, II, p. 109. 
 
 5 
 
 Cooke , Op. cit . , 
 
 61 
 
-83- 
 
 thinking for that* On the other hand, it is more probable that 
 a community of ideals may have been one of the elements which 
 acted to draw them together. The general direction of her thought 
 had been taken before she met him. She writes of Herbert 
 Spencer:’*’ "Of (Herbert Spencer's) friendship I have had the 
 honor and advantage for twenty years, but I believe that every 
 main bias of my mind had been taken before I knew him. Like the 
 rest of his readers, I am, of course indebted to him for much 
 enlargement and clarifying of thought.” It must be remembered 
 that her acquaintance with Spencer antedates that with Lewes. In 
 an intellectual relationship of this character, it is impossible 
 to determine which of the two most influenced the other, but on 
 the whole it seems as probable that George Eliot exerted an 
 influence upon the opinions of Lewes as that he was the formative 
 force o f her ideas. She, like him, accepted the general 
 philosophy of the Philosophie Posit ive . but did not agree en- 
 tirely with the social system worked out in Comtek later works. 
 
 2 
 
 "Lewes,” relates Mathilde Blind, "speaking of the Politique 
 Po s it iv e in his 'History of Philosophy,' admits that his antago- 
 nistic attitude had been considerably modified on learning from 
 the remark of one very dear to him, 'to regard it as an Utopia, 
 presenting hypotheses rather than doctrines — suggestions for 
 future inquiries rather than dogmas for adepts.' 
 
 1 
 
 Cooke, Ojo. Cit . , 172. The author appends the follow- 
 ing note: "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' 'Last words from George Eliot,' 
 in Harper's Magazine for March, 1882. The names of Mill and 
 Spencer are not given in this article, but the words from her 
 letters so plainly refer to them that they have been quoted here 
 as illustrating her relations to these men." 
 
 2 Blind, Op. cit. p. 282. 
 

 \ 
 
“84- 
 
 "On the whole * although George Eliot did not agree with 
 Comte T s later theories concerning the reconstruction of society* 
 she regarded them with sympathy *as the efforts of an individual 
 to anticipate the work of future generations. 1 " 
 
 This attitude would account for the mention of the 
 Politique which she makes in 1867 in a letter to Mrs. Congreve:^" 
 "After breakfast we both read the 'Politique* — George 
 one volume and I another — interrupting each other continually 
 with questions and remarks. That morning study keeps me in a 
 state of enthusiasm through the day — a moral glow which is a 
 sort of milieu subject if for the sublime sea and sky. Mr. 
 
 Lewes is converted to the warmest admiration of the chapter on 
 language in the third volume, which about three years ago he 
 thought slightly of. I think the first chapter of the fourth 
 volume is among the finest of all, and the most finely written. 
 
 My gratitude increases continually for the illumination Comte 
 has contributed to my life. But we both of us study with a 
 sense of having still much to learn and to understand." 
 
 They seem to have acted and reacted one upon the other 
 with a delightfully harmonious result. The final attitude 
 arrived at is, briefly, this: 
 
 They agreed with Comte in his rejection of metaphysics, 
 in his idea of the dominion of law, and, in fact, with all of 
 the doctrines of the 'Positive Philosophy.' 
 
 1 
 
 Cross, Ojd. cit . . Ill, 2-3. 
 
 They rejected his 
 
f 
 
 
 
 
 
-85- 
 
 social theories as absolute rules , looking upon them as 
 hypothetical solutions of the problems of society. They 
 accepted the Religion of Humanity considered as the Grand fit re, 
 and assented to Comte's concept of the importance of feeling as 
 
 the highest expression of human life, with special emphasis 
 
 1 
 
 upon altruism. 
 
 On the other hand, in regard to religion, George Eliot 
 in particular differed from Comte in her attitude toward tradition 
 The new religion was too new and artificial. It involved too 
 abrupt a break with the traditions of the past, ’’the poetic ex- 
 pression of feeling and sentiment” evolved out of the experiences 
 2 
 
 of the race. She preferred to keep the old symbols, reading 
 
 into them the new philosophy. 
 
 This accounts, to some extent, for her refusal to 
 identify herself with the Positivist Church as a member, although 
 she aided the objects of that organization financially and other- 
 wise as far as she was able, and was a close friend of Mr, and 
 Mrs. Congreve. They had been kind to her during that time after 
 her union with Lewes when some of her old friends had become 
 alienated, and from G@orge Eliot we get a different picture of 
 
 Richard Congreve from that shown us by Erederic Harrison. Of 
 
 3 
 
 their first meeting she says in 1859: 
 
 "We have met a pleasant-faced, bright -glancing man, whom 
 
 1 
 
 Cooke, Ojd. cit . . 189-194. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., 250-251. 
 
 3 
 
 Cross, 0£. cit . . II, 62. 
 

 t 
 
 
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- 86 - 
 
 we set down to be worthy of the name, Richard Congreve, I am 
 
 curious to see if our ahnung will be verified," 
 
 1 
 
 And again: 
 
 "We are so happy in the neighborhood of Mr, and Mrs, 
 Richard Congreve, She is a sweet, intelligent, gentle woman, 
 
 I already love her: and his fine, beaming face does me good, 
 like a glimpse of an Olympian," 
 
 From that time on the Congreves and the Leweses were the 
 most intimate of friends. 
 
 The most direct expressions of George Eliot's Positivism 
 
 in her writings are to be found in her poems, "The Choir In- 
 
 visible"gives utterance to the Positivist conception of subjective 
 
 immortality, and "The Spanish Gypsy” was considered at that time 
 
 as a Positivist writing. In 1868 she wrote to Mrs, Congreve 
 2 
 
 concerning it : 
 
 "Tell Dr. Congreve that the 'mass of positivism,' in 
 the shape of 'The Spanish Gypsy,* is so rapidly finding acceptance 
 with the public that the second edition, being all sold, the 
 third, just published, has already been demanded to above 700, 
 
 Do not think that I am becoming an egotistical author. The 
 news concerns the doctrine, not the writer." 
 
 The Priory, as a rendezvous for men of letters of the 
 time, has already been referred to. 
 
 1 
 
 Cross, Op. cit . , II, 73. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., Ill, 49. 
 
 It was a comfortable house 
 

 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 ? 
 
 f 
 
-87- 
 
 in the suburbs of London, and from 1865, when it became the 
 home of the Lewes es, for many years, it was the scene of 
 regular Sunday afternoon gatherings. George Eliot presided 
 over this salon with dignity and charm, but her extreme 
 seriousness required Lewes* vivacity and sparkle to offset it. 
 
 "As a companion Lewes was extremely attractive," says 
 
 1 
 
 Herbert Spencer. He was "full of various anecdote; and an 
 
 admirable mimic; it was impossible to be dull in his company." 
 
 It was this brilliance and flexibility of mind which 
 
 gave the gatherings their zest and which made them so attractive. 
 
 2 
 
 The Positivists all came — the Congreves, Dr. Bridges, Prof. 
 
 Beesly, Moncure Conway, and many others besides, among them Herbert 
 
 Spencer, Professor Huxley, Frederic Harrison, Madame Bodichon, 
 
 Lord Houghton, Tourguenief, Justin McCarthy, Du Maurier, and 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Mark Patti son, Mr. and Mrs. Burne Jones, John 
 
 3 
 
 Everett Millais, Robert Browning, and Tennyson. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, as has already teen noted, was an old 
 friend. It was he, in fact, who had introduced Lewes to Marian 
 Evans in 1851, and he was a life-long friend of them both, in 
 spite of some differences of opinion. His last call upon 
 
 4 
 
 George Eliot was made the day upon which her last illness began. 
 
 1 
 
 Spencer, Autobiography . I, 437. 
 
 2 
 
 Among the friends of Lewes was Wm. Smith, the author 
 of the novel "Thorndale." He had reviewed Comte favorably in 
 "Blackwood’s" in 1843, an article which attracted Bain's interest. 
 (Benn, History of English Hat ionalism, X, 427) . George Eliot 
 said that Lewes "admired and esteemed him very highly." (Cross, 
 Op . cit . , II , 5. ) 
 
 ^Blind , Ojd. cit . . 273. 
 
 ^Cross, Op . cit . . Ill, 315-316. 
 
j 
 
 f 
 
- 68 - 
 
 Lewes, in a journal of 1859, ’’speaks of a walk with Mr* Herbert 
 Spencer* Mr. Spencer’s friendship had been the brightest ray 
 in a very dreary ’wasted period of my life'; it had roused him 
 from indifference to fresh intellectual interest; but he adds, 
 
 ’I owe Spencer another and a deeper debt. It was through him 
 that I learned to know Marian.’”^ 
 
 Spencer was one of the first ac ouaintances made by 
 Marian Evans on her first coming to London, and the friendship 
 grew into one of considerable intimacy* In fact there were 
 
 reports current among their friends that he was in love with her 
 
 2 
 
 and that they were about to be married. "But," Spencer says, 
 
 "neither of these reports was true." She writes of this 
 
 3 
 
 intimacy, in 1852: 
 
 "My brightest spot, next to my love of old friends, 
 
 is the deliciously calm, new friendship that Herbert Spencer gives 
 
 me. We see each other every day, and have a delightful 
 
 camaraderie in everything. But for him my life would be deso- 
 
 4 
 
 late enough." And: "I went to the opera on Saturday — ’I 
 
 Martiri,’ at Co vent Carden — with my ’excellent friend, Herbert 
 Spencer,* as Lewes calls him. We have agreed that we are not 
 in love with each other, and that there is no reason why we 
 should not have as much of each other’s society as we like. He 
 
 1 
 
 Stephen, Ojo. cit., 48. 
 
 2 
 
 Spencer, Autobiography , I, 462. 
 
 3 
 
 Cross, Op. cit., I, 203. 
 
 4 
 
 Ibid . . I, 200. 
 

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-89- 
 
 is a good, delightful creature, and I always feel "better for 
 "being with him." 
 
 The works of Comte were first introduced to Spencer "by 
 George Eliot during this time. "In the course of the spring," 
 he writes,^ "the name of Comte came up in conversation. She 
 had a copy of the Philoeophie Posit ive . and at her instigation 
 I read the introductory chapters of ’Exposition'. As may be 
 inferred from what has been said in past chapters, the task was 
 not an easy one. Such knowledge of French as I had gained by 
 scrambling through half-a-dozen easy novels, content to gather 
 the drift, and skipping what I failed to understand, was of course 
 very inadequate. What I thought about the doctrine of the three 
 stages — theological, metaphysical, and positive — I do not 
 clearly remember. I never considered the matter and was not 
 prepared either to deny or to admit. I believe I remained 
 neutral. But concerning Comte's classification of the sciences 
 I at once expressed a definite opinion. Here I had sufficient 
 knowledge of the facts; and this prompted a pronounced dissent. 
 
 She was greatly surprised: having, as she said, supposed the 
 classification to be perfect. She was but little given to 
 argument; and finding my attitude thus antagonistic, she forth- 
 with dropped the subject of Comte's philosophy, and I read no 
 further." 
 
 In 1855 Spencer had an interview with Comte. Chapman, 
 
 1 
 
 Spencer, Autobiography, I, 461. 
 

 
 t 
 
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-90— 
 
 the publisher of Harriet Martineau's translation, wishing to 
 
 send a share of the profits to him in Paris, had asked Spencer 
 
 to deliver them. He does not seem to have been very prepossessed 
 
 by the personality of the Frenchman. "Certainly his appearance 
 
 1 
 
 was not in the least impressive," he reports, "either in figure 
 
 or face. One could say of his face only that, unattractive 
 
 though it was, it was strongly marked; and in this way distinguished 
 
 from the multitudes of meaningless faces one daily sees. Of our 
 
 conversation I remember only that, hearing of my nervous disorder, 
 
 he advised me to marry; saying that the sympathetic companionship 
 
 of a wife would have a curative influence." 
 
 Herbert Spencer has been frequently numbered among the 
 
 2 
 
 English Positivists., wrongly so, according to Barzellotti, and 
 
 indeed according to Spencer himself. His attitude was one of 
 
 reaction against the philosophy of Comte, as he explains in 
 
 3 
 
 his Autobiography: 
 
 He had been reading Miss Martineau's translation of 
 Comte. "This had been recently issued; and as two of my 
 friends, Mr. Lewes and Miss Evans, were in large measure ad- 
 herents of Comte’s views, I was curious to learn more definitely 
 what these were. Already, as said in a preceding chapter, I 
 had got through the ’Exposition* in the original; and while 
 remaining neutral respecting the doctrine of the three stages, 
 
 1 
 
 Spencer, Op. cit., I, 577. 
 
 2 
 
 Barzellotti, Op. cit . . 80-81. 
 
 3 
 
 Spencer, >0p. C it . I, 517-518. 
 

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- 91 - 
 
 ha d forthwith rejected the clasei f icat ion of the sciences, I 
 had also read Mr. Lewes’s outlines of the Comtean system* serially 
 published in The Lead er. Whether* when I began to read Miss 
 Mart ine au's abridged translation, I had any intention of reviewing 
 it, I cannot remember; but evidently, if not present at the 
 outset, the intention was soon formed. 
 
 "The disciples of M. Comte think that I arc much indebted 
 to him; and so I arc, but in a way widely unlike that which they 
 mean. Save in the adoption of his word 'altruism , 1 which I 
 have defended, and in the adoption of his word 'sociology,' 
 because there was no other available word (for both which 
 adoptions I have been blamed), the only indebtedness I recognize 
 is the indebtedness of antagonism. My pronounced opposition 
 to his views led me to develop some of my own views. What to 
 think, is a question in part answered when it has been decided 
 what not to think. Shutting out any large group of conclusions 
 from the field of speculation, narrows the field; and by so doing 
 brings one nearer to the conclusions which should be drawn. In 
 this way the Positive Philosophy (or rather the earlier part of 
 it, for I did not read the biological or sociological divisions, 
 and I think not the chemical) proved of service to me. It is 
 probable that but for my dissent from Comte's classification of 
 the sciences, my attention would never have been drawn to the 
 subject. Had not the subject been entertained, I should not 
 have entered upon that inquiry which ended in writing 'The Genesis 
 of Science.' And in the absence of ideas reached when I was 
 tracing the genesis of science, one large division of the Pr in - 
 
I 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
92- 
 
 oi pies of Psychology would possibly have lacked its organizing 
 principle, or indeed, would possibly not have been written at all. 
 In this way, then, I trace an important influence on my thoughts 
 exercised by the thoughts of M. Comte; but it was an influence 
 opposite in nature to that which the Comtists suppose." 
 
 He criticised his friends, the Leweees.for inconsistency 
 
 in their views of humanity. "Though they were partial adherents 
 
 of M. Comte my friends did not display much respect for the object 
 
 which he would have us worship. Reverence for humanity in the 
 
 abstract seemed, in them, to go along with irreverence for it in 
 
 the concrete. Pew of these occasions I have described, passed 
 
 without comment from them on the unintelligence daily displayed 
 
 by men — now in maintaining so absurb a curriculum of education 
 
 (which they reprobated just as much as I did), now in the follies 
 
 of legislation, which continually repeat, with but small 
 
 differences, the follies of the past, now in the irrationalities 
 
 1 
 
 of social habits." 
 
 After the death of George Eliot, Spencer wrote to a 
 friend to correct the impression that she had been a disciple 
 of his, saying that, while she was not "a Comtist in the full 
 
 sense of the word she had strong leanings to the ’Religion 
 
 of Humanity 1 " which was always a point of difference between them. 
 Indeed, he seemed to believe that she was becoming more in- 
 fluenced by his (Spencer’s) views toward the last and "veering a 
 
 1 
 
 Spencer, Qjd. Git .. II, 237-8. 
 
-93- 
 
 good deal away from Comte." "Positivism,” he said, "has always 
 been a tacitly tabooed topic between the Lewesee and myself — 
 
 the only topic on which we differed, and which we refrained from 
 
 1 
 
 d iscussing. " 
 
 It seems to have been the habit of Spencer to refrain 
 
 from discussing topics on which he differed strongly with his 
 
 friends, for John Morley, another Positivist, says that he knew 
 
 him at Mill's and visited him at St, John's Wood, but that Spencer 
 
 2 
 
 drew off from talk on serious things. 
 
 Spencer was constantly irritated by the efforts of the 
 
 Positivists to prove his indebtedness to Comte. There was quite 
 
 a little irritation over such a controversy in 1884-5, but they 
 
 were later, says Harrison, on the most friendly terms and Spencer 
 
 3 
 
 "became a reader of the Positivist Review . " 
 
 Dr. Bridges, one of the most thorough Positivists in 
 
 England, pointed out rather clearly the resemblances of Spencer's 
 
 4 
 
 system to that of Comte, and the differences between them. 
 
 They both define the limits of knowledge and include an arrange- 
 ment of scientific material. Both procede from the outer world 
 to man, and both make sociology and ethics the most important part 
 of their systems. Although Spencer will have nothing to do 
 with the Religion of Humanity, still, as Dr. Bridges points out, 
 
 1 
 
 Spencer, Op. cit. , II, 430-431. 
 
 2 
 
 Morley, Recollections. I. 112-113. 
 
 3 
 
 Harrison, Autobiography . II, 113. 
 
 4 
 
 Bridges, Illus trat ions of Positivism . 126-7. 
 

 
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-94- 
 
 his goal is an "evolved Humanity" and such a quotation as the 
 following from Spencer’s Beneficence at Large indicates that the 
 fundamental aim of both is the same. 
 
 "Hereafter the highest ambition of the beneficent will 
 be to have a share — even though an utterly inappreciable and 
 unknown share — in ’the making of Man.* Experience occasionally 
 shows that there may arise extreme interest in pursuing entirely 
 unselfish ends; and, as time goes on, there will be more and more 
 of those whose unselfish ends will be the further evolution of 
 Humanity." 
 
 The great difference between the religion of Spencer 
 and that of Comte is chiefly one of direction. Prom the point at 
 which they both stand in accord — the principle that man’s 
 knowledge does not go beyond the observation of phenomena and their 
 laws Spencer’s religion turns to the contemplation of the Abso- 
 lute or Unknowable, Comte’s to the utilization of the relative 
 2 
 
 or known. 
 
 George Eliot’s gentle and dignified personal character, 
 
 and her keen analytical mind attracted the younger writers and 
 
 drew about her a group of disciples who were often to be found 
 
 3 
 
 at the Priory. Leslie Stephens expresses their attitude towards 
 her with his characteristic gaiety: 
 
 "I am this afternoon to sit at the feet of the immortal 
 
 1 
 
 Bridges. Illustrations of Positivism, 131. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., 263 ff. 
 
 3 
 
 Maitland, Up. cit . , 294. 
 
-95- 
 
 George Eliot. Poor woman! The critics have dealt rather 
 hardly with Daniel Deronda, and, though I agree with them, I am 
 rather sorry for her, for she seems to be really a very noble 
 sort of person, and as little spoilt as a prophetess can well be 
 
 in these days. I always like to talk to her." And in another 
 
 1 
 
 place, in speaking of a studio affair at which he felt rather 
 shy: "I was, I say, silly, for the parties were really far less 
 
 alarming than those at the Leweses, where one had to be ready to 
 discuss metaphysics or the principles of aesthetic philosophy, 
 and to be presented to George Eliot, and offer an acceptable 
 worship." 
 
 Among the habitues of the Priory were also Robert 
 
 Lytton (son of Bulwer Lytton) and Anthony Trollope. How near 
 
 the Leweses came to making Positivists of them it is hard to say. 
 
 Lytton, at the age of thirty-one, expressed to his father his 
 
 belief in "God, soul, hereafter, prayer, reverence for, and 
 
 2 
 
 acceptance of, the hopes and ethics of Christianity." He 
 
 believed, however , that the ethical side of religion and the 
 
 human side of Christ's character should be emphasized. He 
 
 3 
 
 expressed interest in Renan's Vie d e J esu and Seeley's Ecce 
 
 Homo , from this point of view 7 . The former rejected the miraculous 
 
 1 
 
 Maitland, Ojo. cit . . 317. 
 
 2 
 
 Life of Bulwer Lytton . II, 400-401 
 3 
 
 Benn, in his History of English Rationalism , sees in 
 Ecce Homo a temporary compromise between positivism and Christianity 
 He does not know whether Seeley ever studied Comte at first hand, 
 but believes the book to be an attempt to construct an ideal 
 Christian church, using the social doctrines (rejected by the earlier 
 English Positivists) without withdrawing from adherence to 
 Christianity. Benn explains this attempt by surmising that 
 

 
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-96- 
 
 and mystical, the latter implied acceptance of them hut put the 
 
 1 
 
 ethical aspect first, 
 
 2 
 
 The letter which Lytton wrote to George Eliot on the 
 occasion of the death of Lewes will show that it is her view of 
 death which he has accepted and in which he found consolation: 
 
 "Turn which way I will," he wrote, "the shadow of your 
 sorrow still lies darkly on me; I measure it by my knowledge of 
 the magnitude of your own great nature and his worth — who was 
 the last of the few friends wiser than myself to whom from hoy- 
 hood I have looked up, I shall honour his memory, and mourn 
 his loss, and love and thank him as long as I live. But I cannot 
 offer consolation I have never found, and do not feel. Your 
 strength, your wisdom and insight, are immeasurably greater than 
 mine; 1 am comforted by the consciousness that fine souls like 
 yours know how to turn great griefs to best account. But 
 I cannot comfort you. If there be any personal eompensat ion for 
 the death of those we love and need, it is unknown to me. The 
 only mitigating consequence of such bereavement that I have ever 
 experienced is one v f hich you yourself once predicted to me, and 
 which I therefore know you will not miss. Certainly, since my 
 dear father died I have been in closer and more constant inter- 
 
 Comte’s ideas had in some way reached Seeley's mind, and, mingling 
 with older traditions, had produced this result, and he sees in 
 the book evidences of, the French type of thought and feeling 
 mingled with the English passion for compromise. (Benn, Hist o ry 
 of English Rationalism . J, 241-244). 
 
 1 
 
 Letters of Robert Lytton, I. 139. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., II, 138. 
 

 
 
 
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 course with him, and have seemed to understand him better, than 
 
 when he was alive* But even this comes slowly. And oh, the 
 
 difference! All intercourse with the dead is so shadowy, so 
 
 indistinct, so like twilight after daylight." 
 
 The consolation which she offered him must have been 
 
 that which she voices in "The Choir Invisible." 
 
 "Oh may I join the choir invisible 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 In minds made better by their presence: live 
 In pulses stirred to generosity. 
 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 For miserable aims that end with self. 
 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars. 
 And 'with their mild persistence urge man’s search 
 To vaster issues. 
 
 This is life to come. 
 
 Which martyred men have made more glorious 
 For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
 That purest heaven, be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony. 
 
 Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love. 
 
 Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — 
 
 Be the sweet presence of a good diffused. 
 
 And in diffusion ever more intense. 
 
 So shall 1 join the choir invisible ^ 
 
 Whose music is the gladness of the world." 
 
 Anthony Trollope first met Lewes in 1860 at a dinner 
 
 given by George Chapman, of the Cornhill Magaz ine and the Pall 
 
 Mall Gazett e , to his contributors. Five years later he was 
 
 associated with him in the establishment of the Fortnightly 
 
 Review , the object of which was perfect freedom of speech. 
 
 2 
 
 "The matter on which we were all agreed," wrote Trollope, 
 "was freedoiii of speech, combined with personal responsibility. 
 
 1 
 
 W o rk s of George Eliot . Vol. IX, p. 454-455. 
 
 2 
 
 Trollope, Autobiography . 178-9. 
 
-98- 
 
 We would be neither conservative nor liberal, neither religious 
 nor free-thinking, neither popular nor exclusive; — but we would 
 let any man who had a thing to say, and knew how to say it, speak 
 
 freely In the very beginning, I militated against this 
 
 impossible negation of principles, — and did so most irrationally, 
 seeing that I had agreed to the negation of principles, — by 
 declaring that nothing should appear denying or questioning the 
 divinity of Christ." 
 
 Trollope criticised the eclectic policy of the magazine 
 
 1 
 
 later as being unpractical. "It was as though a gentleman 
 
 should go into the House of Commons determined to support no 
 
 party, but to serve his country by individual utterances. Such 
 
 gentlemen have gone into the House of Commons, but they have not 
 
 served their country much." "Of course the project broke down. 
 
 Liberalism, free-thinking, and open inquiry will never object to 
 
 appear in company with their opposites, because they have the 
 
 conceit to think that they can quell those opposites; but the 
 
 oppocites will not appear in conjunction with liberalism, free- 
 
 thinking and open inouiry. As a natural consequence, our new 
 
 publication became an organ of liberalism, free-thinking and open 
 2 
 
 inquiry." Indeed the magazine was criticised as being a 
 Positivist organ. 
 
 Besides his connection with the Fortnightly Review . 
 
 1 
 
 Trollope, Autobiography , 180t 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid . 
 

 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
-99- 
 
 Ant hony Trollope was associated with the- Leweses in a personal 
 
 way. He refers to them as among his dearest and most intimate 
 
 friends, and was often at the Priory. "Of all this company, 
 
 none more frequently than Trollope obtained a seat near Mrs • 
 
 Lewes' armchair on the left of the fireplace. The two novelists 
 
 never talked publicly about themselves, but among the guests 
 
 there were some who noticed a kind of parallel in George Eliot's 
 
 and Anthony Trollope's literary courses. The earliest successes 
 
 of both with the general public won the favour also of their 
 
 1 
 
 most famous fellow-authors." Escott asserts that George 
 
 Eliot's influence upon Trollope was very great. He began to 
 
 deal less superficially with hie characters and to introduce 
 
 questions involving graver moral issues. "Among the most 
 
 marked of Trollope's mental features was his receptivity 
 
 His admiration of George Eliot's art generally, particularly 
 
 of those qualities in her work that secured her the compliment 
 
 of comparison with Shakespeare, did without affecting his 
 
 literary style and method to some degree influence, as he himself 
 
 2 
 
 felt, his views of character and life." 
 
 Whether this influence and that of Congreve, Bridges, 
 Beesly, and Harrison, whom he-met there, gave a Positivist 
 tinge to his views, does not appear in his Autobiography , but 
 they must at least have made him very familiar with Positivist 
 teachings . 
 
 1 
 
 Escott, Anthony Trollope, 183. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., 185. 
 
- 100 - 
 
 Previous mention hae been made of the fact that John 
 
 Morley was one of the Priory group. We have noted his connection 
 
 with the Positivists of Oxford and his introduction to the 
 
 Positivists of London upon his arrival there, through George 
 
 Eliot. There a double Positivist influence, that of the Priory 
 
 1 
 
 and that of Mill, was at work upon him. He tells us that the 
 system, "supported as it was by the attraction of Comte’s survey 
 of history, laid strong hold of me; and at one time I was not 
 far off from a formal union with this new church. The anti- 
 sectarian instinct, confirmed by the influence of Mill, held me 
 back. Habitual association with men like Spencer, Tyndall, 
 
 Huxley, who bitterly condemned official Positivism as Catholicism 
 minus Christianity, had something to do with it. Pierre 
 Lafitte, its French representative — and a most brilliant, 
 vivacious, illuminating representative he vras — in the many 
 conversations we had together, had tact enough not to labour the 
 pontifical side of Comte’s system, while he deepened and 
 strengthened the general impression of the soundness and value of 
 the early speculations, and he did more than anybody else to fur- 
 nish the key and the direction to my French studies, whatever for 
 their season they wero worth. He elaborated in patient detail 
 and with scientific method Turgot'e idea of progress, and made 
 of history an ordered course, not a succession of vast epidemic 
 fevers. Revolutions, Reactions, Reformations, Counter-reformations. 
 He did much to rescue history from the desperate case put by 
 
 1 
 
 Morley, Recollect ions . I, 69-70. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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- 101 - 
 
 Bishop Butler who, one night walking in the gardens behind his 
 palace, suddenly turned to a chaplain and amazed him by the 
 question whether public bodies might not go mad like individuals, 
 for in truth nothing else could account for most of the trans- 
 actions in history. Frederic Harrison, in those days incomparable 
 as controversialist, powerful in historical sense and knowledge, 
 became one of my most intimate and attached friends for fifty 
 years . 
 
 "It must have been in this school that, besides much 
 else, I began to absorb the lesson that I tried to apply all 
 through — to do justice to truths presented and services rendered 
 by men in various schools, with whom in important and even in 
 vital respects I could not in the least bring myself to agree. 
 
 Comte has been rightly applauded for according generous recog- 
 nition to all 'who, with whatever imperfections of doctrine or 
 even of conduct, contributed materially to the work of human 
 improvement.' Far less elementary in those days than it seems 
 now, this sank deep in me, and in spite of some ephemeral 
 severities of expression that might perhaps be forgiven to one 
 whose pen was in constant employment, most of it controversial, 
 it became a golden rule of historic and literary admeasurement." 
 
 The conversations with Lafitte, Comte's successor, 
 which Morley speaks of here, must have taken place during the 
 three or four visits which Lafitte made to England, where he made 
 a rather favorable impression. "His wit, learning, and brilliant 
 conversation were fully recognised by judges so competent as 
 Morison, John Morley, Sir Grant Duff, Lord Arthur Russell, Lord 
 
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- 102 - 
 
 Houghton, in England;” is the statement made by Harrison, ”and 
 in France by his friends, Sa inte-Beuve , Renan, Madame Adam, and 
 Anatole Prance, who introduced his portrait in more than one of 
 hie own tales.” 1 
 
 A few years after coming to London, Morley was associated 
 
 with Lewes, George Eliot, Trollope, and others in the Fortnightly 
 2 
 
 project, replacing Lewes as editor in 1866. It was under Morley, 
 
 says Harrison, that the magazine attained its real success. 
 
 About this time he first made the acquaintance of 
 
 John Stuart Mill* "Through a French friend I was presented to 
 
 3 
 
 Mill in 1865," he says. ”His wife had died in 1859, and he 
 
 was still in the long seclusion, down at Blackheath, that fol- 
 lowed his loss. He had sought my acquaintance on the strength 
 of an article in the Saturday Review on Hew Ideas.” Morley 
 became a regular guest at the Blackheath Sunday dinners and 
 maintained the attitude of an admiring disciple* When he 
 went to America, he was delighted to find that Mill, in letters 
 of introduction given him to Emerson and others, described him 
 as a personal friend. In the Blackheath days, "Grote, Spencer, 
 Fawcett, Sir Charles Lyell, Louis Blanc .Thornton, Cairnes, were 
 
 1 
 
 Harrison, Autobio graphy . II, 38-39. 
 
 2 
 
 Morley and Robert Lytton were good friends for a long 
 time — until a misunderstanding put an end to their intimacy. 
 Among Lytton' s letters is a rhymed epistle to Morley: 
 
 "Or do you talk treason 
 
 With the Fortnightly chiefs of the Radical garrison. 
 Implacable Beesly and high-minded Harrison?" 
 
 (Letters. I. 325.) 
 
 3 
 
 Morley, 0£. cit . . I, 52-53. 
 
r 
 
 
 
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-103- 
 
 among the few others at these ideal symposia. " The friendship 
 
 and personal contact with Mill continued for eight years , until 
 Mill left England to take up his residence in France . Morley 
 
 describes himself as a young disciple, "but adds that he did not 
 lose rudiments of a mind of his own. 
 
 He was a member of a small club called the Dominicans, 
 formed by Mill and his friends in order to enable the former 
 to expound his views to his followers. Harrison was sometimes 
 there, and Leslie Stephen. 
 
 Although the influence of Mill upon the thought of 
 Morley was considerable, the younger man's criticisms of Posi- 
 tivism were not identical with those of his master. His atti- 
 tude toward the philosophy is pretty well expressed in his 
 article on Comte in the Encyclopedia Britannica . Comte* s 
 statement of his social concepts "in relation to the history of 
 civilization of the most advanced portion of the human race,” 
 as developed in the Philosophie Positive , he approves, character* 
 izing it as a "masterpiece of rich, luminous, and far-reaching 
 suggestion. 7/hatever additions it may receive, and whatever 
 corrections it may require, this analysis of social evolution 
 will continue to be regarded as one of the great achievements 
 of human intellect.' 1 
 
 Comte had suggested that Europe would, in the future, 
 be broken up into many small states, democratically governed. 
 Morley*s view of this matter is expressed in a letter to Sir 
 
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-104- 
 
 1 
 
 Arthur Helps: 
 
 "The note of Harrison's to which you give your assent 
 expresses what is, I believe, a central conviction of Comte's — 
 that all Europe will eventually form itself into a large number 
 of self-governing but closely connected communities. The state 
 will thus ultimately take the size of the Platonic or Aristotelian 
 TroAlS . I confess these things are too high for me. I 
 
 cannot for the life of me see three centuries ahead.” 
 
 The Religion of Humanity did not appeal to him as 
 
 2 
 
 necessary. He quotes from Comte: 
 
 "Society can only be regenerated by the greater subor- 
 dination of politics to morals, by the moralizat ion of capital, 
 by the renovation of the family, by a higher conception of 
 marriage and so on. These ends can only be reached by a heartier 
 development of the sympathietic instincts. The sympathetic 
 instincts can only be developed by the Religion of Humanity." 
 
 Morley objects that the sympathetic instincts have to be already 
 developed before one will accept Humanity as the supreme being. 
 
 He does not enter into the controversy over the fitness of 
 humanity to become the Grand Etre, but observes: "And when all 
 
 is said, the invention does not help us. We have still to settle 
 what jis_ for the good of Humanity, and we can only do that in the 
 old-fashioned way. There is no guidance in the conception. No 
 effective unity can follow from it, because you can only find out 
 
 1 
 
 The Go rres pond ence of Sir Arthur Helps . 294. 
 
 2 
 
 Morley, Article on C omt e , Encyclopedi a Br itannica . 
 
-105- 
 
 the right and wrong of a given course by summing up the advan- 
 tages and disadvantages, and striking a balance, and there is 
 nothing in the Religion of Humanity to force two men to find the 
 balance on the same side. The Oomtists are no better off than 
 the Utilitarians in judging policy, events, conduct. The various 
 hypotheses, dogmas, proposals, as to the family, to capital, 
 etc,, are merely propositions measurable by considerations of 
 utility and a balance of expediencies. Many of these proposals 
 are of the highest interest, and many of them are actually avail- 
 able; but there does not seem to be one of them of an available 
 
 kind, which could not equally well be approached from other sides, 
 
 1 
 
 and even incorporated in some radically antagonistic system,” 
 
 Another of Morley's close and stimulating friendships 
 
 2 
 
 was that with George Meredith, of whom he says: 
 
 ”It would be hard to imagine finer personal inspiration 
 for a beginner with a strong feel for letters in their broadest 
 sense — letters in terms of life, and in relation to life — 
 than was George Meredith in his early prime. When 1 came to 
 London at five or six and twenty to try my fortunes at a hazardous 
 vocation, he, being ten years my senior, benevolently took to me, 
 and extended a cordial, indulgent, and ever faithful hand. I 
 was happy enough to hold it until the very end of his life, when 
 he left me as one of his three trustees. His genius in his early 
 
 1 
 
 Morley, Article on Comte . Bncyclopedia Britannica , 
 
 2 
 
 Morley, Recollections . I, 36-38. 
 

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- 106 - 
 
 days and mine had met little encouragement, and his name was 
 neither widely known nor at all valued even by a few, and so in 
 
 truth it stood for long years after 
 
 "He came to the morning meal after a long hour's stride 
 in the tonic air and fresh loveliness of cool woods and green 
 slopes, w^ith the brightness of sunrise upon his trow, responsive 
 penetration in his glance, the turn of radiant irony in his lips 
 and peaked beard, his fine poetic head bright with crisp brown 
 
 hair, Phoebus Apollo descending upon us from Olympus 
 
 "His personality seemed to give new r life, inner mean- 
 ing, vivacity, surprise, to lessons from wholesome books and 
 teachers, and to shower a sparkling cataract of freshness on them 
 all. Even the sight of a devoted worker persevering in un- 
 rewarded toil against clouds of difficulty, was in itself no 
 
 ordinary stimulus No musical note from a lute, it was 
 
 the call of the trumpet from live lips. Live w r ith the world. 
 
 No cloister. No languor. Play your part. Pill the day. 
 
 Ponder well and loiter not. Let laughter brace you. Exist 
 in everyday communion with Nature. Nature bids you take all, 
 only be sure you learn how to do without." 
 
 Meredith had teen at eel ool in Germany until the age 
 of sixteen, but his thought was more closely allied to that of the 
 Prench philosophers. He came to England, was articled to a 
 solicitor, but gave that up for letters and began earning his 
 living by his pen at the age of twenty-one. "In London he 
 became one of the leading spirits in the group of young philo- 
 sophical and positivistic Radicals, among whom were John (after- 
 

 
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-107- 
 
 wards Lord) Morley, Frederic Harrison, Cotter Morison and 
 
 Admiral Maxse." In 1867, during Morley*s visit to America, 
 
 1 
 
 Meredith edited the Fortnightly Review in his place* 
 
 Morley speaks of him as associated with the Positivists 
 
 2 
 
 during the war between France and Germany: 
 
 "When the war between France and Germany came to a 
 head at Sedan, if divided our small Liberal company. The Posi- 
 tivist followers of Comte were some of them, like Harrison and 
 Beesly, ardent for France, Morison an ardent German, Maxse, 
 who was not a Positivist, out and out French. 'Morley and I, f 
 wrote Meredith to his boy, f do our utmost to preserve an even 
 balance.' In a notable paragraph next year he says to Maxse: 
 T What I wish is that you and I should look to the good future of 
 men with some faith in it, and capacity to regard some phases of 
 history without letting our sensations blind and bewilder us. 
 
 I am neither German nor French, nor — unless the nation is 
 attacked — English. I am European and Cosmopolitan — for 
 humanityi The nation which shows most worth is the nation I 
 love and reverence.'" 
 
 He was not among the most ardent followers of Comte, 
 however, in spite of the fact that his views had a decided 
 positivist tendency, for he s eld om ment ions the philosophy or 
 the philosopher at a time when such people as Frederic Harrison 
 
 1 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, Article on Meredith. 
 
 E 
 
 Morley, Hecollect ions . 45-6. 
 
-108- 
 
 had the names Comte and Positivism constantly upon their lips. 
 
 I have been able to find Oomte's name only once in Meredith l s 
 
 letters. In 1865, the year of the founding of the Fortnightly 
 
 1 
 
 Review , he wrote to Captain Maxse: "You should read Lewes* 
 
 article on Comte in the 'Fortnightly' before this:- also Harrison's 
 on Cooperative Labour." 
 
 Meredith criticised the Christian church chiefly because 
 of its clergy* Such paseages as the following from his letters 
 indicate a foreboding distrust of the priesthood: 
 
 Philosophy will sap its (the church * s) structure . Most 
 intelligent young men will not seek an establishment as church- 
 men, but will think for themselves and give their lives to other 
 matters* The standard of churchmen vail be lower* "These will 
 find themselves at variance with their intellectual superiors, 
 and in self-defence will attempt to wield the Dogma and knock us 
 
 down with a club. In about twenty years' time we may expect 
 
 2 
 
 a conflict to come." (Written 1865). 
 
 (To Maxse) "We differ in our spirit of object to the 
 dominant creed: but I suppose that twenty years hence we shall 
 not differ. When the Ministers of Religion press on for an 
 open rupture by attempts at persecution, it will be time to take 
 rank under colours, until when I hold myself in reserve. I 
 don't want the day to be advanced. I think you altogether to 
 impetuous: 500 years too fast for the human race: I think that 
 
 1 
 
 Meredith, Letters . 174. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., 173. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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-109- 
 
 where th© Christian ministers are guilty of little more than 
 
 boredom, you have got them in a state of perfection, and at least 
 
 owe them your tolerance for theirs:- And so I shall continue to 
 
 think until next I go to church . 
 
 "The man of the country that fights priestcraft and 
 
 priests is to my mind striking deeper for freedom than can be 
 
 struck anywhere at present, I foresee a perilous struggle with 
 2 
 
 them," 
 
 With Christianity itself, however, .he was sympat hetic 
 
 and took the Positivist attitude of viewing it as a phase of 
 
 human development. In remonstrating with Captain Maxse on the 
 
 3 
 
 extreme radicalism of the latter, ha says: 
 
 "Between you and your Philosophy you would have no home 
 on our planet. You presume moreover to declare yourself as if, 
 perceiving a system to be faulty, it was an imperative duty to 
 shred it to the winds. You must bear in mind that Christianity 
 will always be one of the great chapters in the History of 
 
 Humanity Prom the Pagan divinity to the Christian, I 
 
 see an advanced conception and the nearer we get to a general 
 belief in the abstract Deity — i. e. the more and more abstract, 
 the nearer are men to a comprehension of the principles 
 (morality, virtue, etc.) than which we require nothing further 
 to govern us." 
 
 The Deity mentioned here is not identified with the 
 
 1 
 
 Meredith, Lett ers . 175. 
 
 2 
 
 Ibid., 252. 
 
 3 
 
 Ibid . . 171. 
 

- 110 - 
 
 Oomtist Humanity . In fact Meredith clings to a more mystical 
 conception of the Supreme Being — 
 
 n Tbe Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown, 
 
 To whom unv/ittingly did he aspire 
 In wilderness, where bitter was his need; 
 
 To whom in blindness, as an earthly seed 1 
 
 For light and air he struck through crimson mire." 
 
 2 
 
 Perhaps hie letter to his son, written in 187£, is as 
 clear a statement of his religious views as he makes anywhere. 
 
 "The Christian teaching is sound and good: the eccles- 
 iastical dogma is an instance of the poverty of humanity*s mind 
 hitherto, and has often in its hideous fangs and claws shown whence 
 
 we draw our descent Belief in religion has done and does 
 
 this good to the young; it floats them through the perilous sensual 
 period when the animal appetites most need control and transmu- 
 tation. If you have not the belief, set yourself to love virtue 
 by understanding that it is your best guide both as to what is due 
 to others and what is for your positive personal good. If your 
 mind honestly rejects it, you must call on your mind to supply 
 
 its place from your own resources Virtue and Truth are 
 
 one. Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you 
 will be living justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense 
 of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers 
 whenever you chance to doubt that he leads tc good. We grow 
 to good as surely as the plant grows to the light. The school 
 
 1 
 
 Quoted by J. A. Hammerton in George Mered ith in 
 Anecdote and Criticism, p. 320. 
 
 2 
 
 Meredith, Letters . 237-8. 
 
- 111 - 
 
 haa only to look through history for a scientific assurance of it. 
 And do not lose the hah it of praying to an Unsoen Divinity. 
 
 Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, tut prayer 
 for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches 
 the gift it seeks." 
 
 The idea of humanity and its claim upon our loyalty, 
 its importance in our thoughts, was a prominent one to him. 
 
 Much association with adherents of the Religion cf Humanity 
 must have emphasized it. The spirit which moved Robert Lytton 
 to stress the ethical and human side of Ohr i st ianity , which 
 prompted Ruskin, and Huxley, to give a religious significance 
 to the service of humanity, and which caused Meredith to say that 
 
 Ruskin 1 s work would he found good hy posterity because he 
 
 1 
 
 brought humanity into it — this spirit was positivist in 
 character and in accord with the Religion of Humanity, whether 
 derived from Comte or not. Meredith was religious in spirit, 
 but he had less interest in personal immortality than in virtue, 
 and he exhorted the soldiers of Humanity to its defense with 
 ardor and passion. 
 
 "They number hoary heads in that hard flock. 
 
 Trim swordsmen they put forth; yet try thy steel. 
 
 Thou fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel 
 The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew 
 A chasm sheer into the barren rock, g 
 
 And bring the army of the faithful through. 
 
 1 
 
 Meredith, Letters, 199. 
 
 2 
 
 Ouoted by Morley, Recollections , I, 38. 
 
- 112 - 
 
 G OCCLUSIONS 
 
 From 80 limited a study of the subject as this has 
 necessarily been, it is difficult to draw definite and detailed 
 conclusions concerning the extent of Positivism in England. Mill 
 it was who introduced it, and through his writings and personal 
 influence, as well as those of his disciples, among them George 
 Henry Lewes, it spread among a limited number of liberal thinkers. 
 As the writings of the earlier Positivists came to be read in 
 the universities, they drew the attention of a group of young men 
 to the works of Comte, and these men, on leaving the universities 
 and going to London, formed rather intimate associations with 
 Lewes and George Eliot at the Priory, and with Mill at Blackheath 
 and the Dominicans Club. In these places they came in contact 
 with Positivists of all shades of thought. 
 
 Very few, if any of them (with the possible exception 
 of Richard Congreve) accepted the doctrines of Comte in t ot o . 
 
 The greater number inclined to the interpretation of Mill — 
 the acceptance of the philosophy with its scientific basis, the 
 law of three states, anc the evolutionary conception of history; 
 a belief in the idea of a Religion of Humanity, with a refusal 
 of its too complicated ritual and ceremony; and the rejection of 
 Comtek ideas for the future organization of society. 
 
 The greatest differences between these men seem to 
 have come about over the Religion of Humanity. A small group 
 of such adherents as Congreve and Harrison formed a Positivist 
 
- 1 15 - 
 
 church and carried on regular worship. Others, as for instance 
 the Leweses, felt a truly religious sentiment towards humanity, 
 hut did not subscribe to the touots of the Positivist church to 
 the extent of uniting with it. Mill was one of those who 
 approved of the idea of this religion, but did not seem to feel 
 the need of an organized worship. Moreover, there v*ere a number 
 of people, who, while entertaining a feeling towards humanity 
 essentially religious, scoffed at, or violently opposed the 
 theories of Comte. To this group belonged Ruskin and Huxley* 
 
 There were certain elements of Positivism which seemed 
 likely to make a strong appeal to Englishmen at this time. That 
 it was founded upon science was one of the chief claims made for 
 it by its adherents. This was a period at which science was 
 becoming more prominent than ever before, but we find that those 
 men of letters usually considered the apologists for new scien- 
 tific theories — Huxley and Spencer — adopted an antagonistic 
 attitude toward Positivism. 
 
 Another element of appeal was the religious one, and 
 it was hardly more successful than the scientific one. With 
 their old faith crumbling, many people felt an imperative need 
 for a new one to take its place. And yet, to such men as 
 Matthew Arnold and John Addington Symonds this new religion 
 based on reason had no attraction, while George Meredith, ac- 
 cepting certain Positivist doctrines, kept his more or less 
 mystical belief in a Deity. 
 
 Wherein was the Religion of Humanity a failure? Some 
 natures, such as that of John Stuart Mill, are so constituted 
 

 
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- 114 - 
 
 that they do not seem to feel with emotional intensity the 
 necessity of a close personal communion with a Deity, and are so 
 radical that they have no hesitation in "breaking with sentimental 
 traditions of the past. For such men the new religion was 
 adequate* To those, however, for whom a large portion of the 
 efficacy of religion lay in a sense of personal dependence upon 
 the infinite strength of a Superior Being which does not partake 
 of the evident weakness of humanity, Comte , s religion seemed a 
 mere flimsy make -shift. Moreover, it lacked the appeal of old 
 associations and of hoary traditions, developed slowly through 
 the ages. Men who were accustomed to associate the word worship 
 with the conception o f an infinitely grander Being than that of 
 humanity, whose frailties and weaknesses they so well knew, such 
 men found something grotesque in the thought of worshipping 
 their own species. It was too widely removed from the "God of 
 our Fathers;” and so, withheld by reason from worshipping a God, 
 they preferred to worship not at all, or to wait and hope for a 
 
 sublimer faith. 
 

-115- 
 
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r 
 
-116- 
 
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-117- 
 
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