England could you see such a sight as was presented that night by the streets of Dunkerque, for the English do not understand these things: and if they did, they would not bestow the energy necessary to accomplish them. We spend money upon in-door amusements: the French upon out. It is asserted that the fireworks cost 8000 francs. The crowd assembled to witness them was immense, and several individuals were rendered insensible by the pressure. They commenced just before nine, and were indeed magnificent. To give an adequate description of them would be impossible. Now, the air would be filled with balls of the most brilliant and varied colours; now, would descend showers of golden rain; now, jets of silver. Ere one device had faded away, its beauties presenting a succession of wonders, ever changing, another would break forth. Now, would be discovered the letter N, stationary in the midst of revolving stars and prisms of vivid brilliancy; now, as you looked, the letter dissolved itself into E: here, would be shining forth a resplendant crown; there, towering aloft, the Imperial eagle: and the last scene, the "bouquet," rising into the air, and almost seeming to touch the pale stars of ANOTHER hemisphere, was a sight worth having crossed the Channel to see. Never will that night, and its many beauties, be erased from the memory's eye of the amazed and delighted spectators. May the Emperor and Empress come again to Dunkerque! is the sentence in everybody's mouth: and we heartily echo it. Never mind the money! LITERARY LEAFLETS. BY SIR NATHANIEL. No. XIII.-" POSITIVE" PHILOSOPHY: COMTE And Lewes.* HIGHLY versatile or rather, "comprehensive," to adopt Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's verbal amendment-is the talent which has been manifested, πολυμερώς και πολυτρόπως, by Mr. G. H. Lewes. "Je voudrais," once said Voltaire, in his familiar correspondence, "que Newton êut fait des vaudevilles, je l'en estimerais davantage. Celui qui n'a qu'un talent peut être un grand génie ; celui qui en a plusieurs est plus aimable." Voltaire would have pronounced the lively author of " Blanche, Rose, and Violet," very aimable. That tale, and " Ranthorpe," are his ventures as a novelist. His play, "The Noble Heart," has elicited tears and plaudits on the stage, nor needs to deprecate reviewal in the closet. In biography he is recognised by his Life of Robespierre-in criticism, by his "Spanish Drama," and a large miscellany of contributions to the quarterly and weekly press-in metaphysics, by his "Biographical History of Philosophy," by far the best compendium of the kind in the language, what * Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences: being an Exposition of the Cours de Philosophie Positive of Auguste Comte. By G. H. Lewes. London: H. G. Bohn. 1853. ever we may think of his own anti-metaphysical stand-point-in natural science, by his discussions on the "passage from the organic to the inorganic," on the "Vestiges"" theory, on the possibility of spontaneous combustion, and many another quæstio vexata. The French lightness of his style makes whatever he indites highly readable-nor do we find in his manner so much of "flippancy" and "sparkling shallowness," as to impel us to sympathy with Madame d'Ossoli's wrath at his undertaking the Life of Goethe. At the present time he appears to be the ruling spirit of that noticeable nondescript among weekly journals, the Leader -a pretty vehicle of propagandism in the cause of free-thinking and free-speaking a perfect repertory of the new curiosities of literature in matters political, theological, social, scientific, and aesthetic. The aim of that journal would seem, As far as might be, to carve out Free space for every human doubt, That the whole mind might orb about*— Yet (is this yet a thing to be ashamed of?) we will plead guilty to a habit of consulting some at least of its columns, with infinitely greater interest (they are so fresh and suggestive, so piquant in their very audacity!) than we do those of other papers, of time-honoured prestige, and unimpeachable orthodoxy. And we remember how one of the most distinguished critics of the age-himself, observe, a stanch Tory, a good High Churchman, and indeed a kind of cyclopædic antithesis to the Leader— once recorded as follows his testimony to its drift: "a journal," he called it, "distinguished by its ability, by its hardihood of speculation, by its comprehensive candour, but, in my eyes, still more advantageously distinguished by its deep sincerity." Its literary department is conducted by Mr. Lewes, and in other sections his "fine French hand"+ is probably traceable-making it the organ of his assaults on conservatism in faith and practice, and especially of his enforcement of the "positive" philosophy which seems to hold, with Byron, that —our days are too brief for affording Space to dispute what no one ever could Decide, and everybody one day will Know very clearly-or at least lie still. And therefore would it leave off metaphysical To that journal Mr. Lewes contributed, some months since, a series of articles expository of the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, and which forms the first part of the volume of Bohn's Scientific Library now before us. The English reader who desires a fuller presentment of the subject, will of course consult Miss Martineau's two volumes. But probably, most English readers will find quite enough to "give them pause" in Mr. Lewes's compact epitome-which has the additional attraction of being conveyed in a clear, and lively, and highly readable form-never too diffuse to be heavy (the original sin of the original author), nor too condensed to be easily intelligible; the very book, in fact, to secure a * Tennyson: The Two Voices. By the way, how comes it that so easy and practised a writer-versed, one would think, in the philosophy of ne quid nimis-should be so lavish of marks of admiration? What a fund he has of mirabilia dictu! hearing for M. Comte, if he is to have one at all among our countrymen en masse. A brief biographical introduction is prefixed, from which it appears that the founder of Positivism as a science was born in 1797, of an "eminently Catholic and monarchical" family-that while at college, in his fourteenth year, he first felt "the necessity of an entire renovation in philosophy," involving the application of the scientific Method to vital and social problems, as well as to the phenomena of the inorganic worldthat he subsequently co-operated for some time with St. Simon-that in his twenty-ninth year insanity (with which his enemies would taunt him to this day) was the transient result of a "transient cerebral disorder”that he became professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, but lost that and other posts by the systematic hostility of some brother professors, and is now, indeed, a needy and dependent man. One year of "chaste and exquisite affection," of ample power to soften and subdue the angularities and asperities of his too exclusively intellectual system, gave him a new glimpse into man's destiny, and taught him the predominance due to the affections. His writings, composed with singular rapidity, already amount to twelve portly tomes. hastily glance at some of the salient points of M. Comte's philosophy.-Its fundamental law is, the passage of Humanity through three successive stages-the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. These three phases of intellectual evolution characterise the progress of the individual as well as of the race, of the unit man as well as of the mass of men. The preparatory phase-called the theological, or supernatural-is that in which the mind seeks causes, asks the how of every phenomenon, the ultimate whence of every fact, the wherefore of every why. In it, the mind ascribes every event to an immediate divine agent, and every unusual or exceptional appearance to the express favour or displeasure of that extra-mundane agent. The mind regards Nature "as the theatre whereon the arbitrary wills and momentary caprices of Superior Powers play their varying and variable parts. Men are startled at unusual occurrences, and explain them by fanciful conceptions. A solar eclipse is understood, and unerringly predicted to a moment, by Positive Science; but in the theological epoch it was believed that some dragon had swallowed the sun." Such is phase the first. And observe : not one honest English Churchman, not one plain English Christian, to this very hour, has advanced beyond this phase. For the former has not expunged from his prayer-book, supplications for rain or for fair weather; nor has the latter ceased to believe in a particular providence; things. wholly set aside as old wives' fables by the positive philosophy. So that every father's son amongst us who holds to the creed of "ancestral voices," and so worships the God of his fathers, and still abides by the faith of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, must be prepared for the contempt, uttered or unexpressed, inalienable from a positivist in the matu rity of stage the third, towards a supernaturalist in the groping babyhood of stage the first. Now for the second phase-the metaphysical. Here, a modification has taken place. The supernatural agents have merged in certain abstract forces, which are supposed to inhere in various substances, and to have a capacity of engendering phenomena. The gods are ignored, or displaced by metaphysical entities. The divine personalities have given way to certain hypothetical principles. Metaphysical philosophy differs from theological, in its admission of the notion of constancy or invariableness in the movements of Nature; and from positive, in its hypothesis of an agency superadded to the phenomena-in its declining to confine itself to the observed fact, and its pertinacious suggestion of an explanation for the fact-in its imagining an entity inhering in substances as an invariable real presence. Thus, the metaphysical physiologist, for example, instead of contenting himself, as the positivist does, with observations restricted to biological phenomena, with a view to apprehend the laws of their action, proceeds to speculate on the vital essence, on the causes of life, on the principle of existence, pronouncing the subject of his research, "chemical affinity," or "electricity," or 66 nervous fluid," or what not. And again observe: no man who still affects even so abstract a phrase as "the Laws of Nature," has yet emerged from this second, or metaphysical, stage, into the positive third. For, Law is the subtle but supersubtle, the delicate but supposititious "abstract entity," which metaphysics gratuitously superadds to concrete fact, and which, as imaginary and potentially misleading, is nehushtan to the iconoclastic protestantism of positive science. What, then, is the third phase-what is this positive philosophy, so revolutionary in its policy, so exterminating in its decrees? It is that phase in the development of Humanity, social and individual, in which the mind, rejecting as futile all speculation about cause and principle and essence, limits its inquiry to phenomena, and to their unvarying relations, simply with a view to the mastery of their laws. Positive Philosophy is, therefore, defined to be, the Explanation of the Phenomena of the Universe. The WHY it declines to scrutinise, as something far above out of its reach. The How it sedulously and solely investigates. "The positive stage," says Mr. Lewes, "explains phenomena by ascertained laws, laws based on distinct and indisputable certitude gathered in the long and toilsome investigation of centuries; and these laws are not only shown to be demonstrable to reason, but accordant with fact; for the distinguishing characteristic of science is, that it sees and foresees. Science is prevision. Certainty is its basis and its glory." In this "recognition of invariableness" lies the "germ of science, because on it alone can prevision of phenomena depend-prevision being the test of knowledge. Now, all the sciences, physical and social-this is a capital characteristic of M. Comte's philosophy-all are to be regarded as branches of one Science, and so to be investigated on one and the same Method. The student must therefore arrange the sciences according to their dependence on each other; beginning with the "simplest (most general) phenomena, and proceeding successively to the most complex and particular." By which rule, the following will be the order in which he studies the five sciences involved in the positive method-for it is peremptorily enforced, as a fundamental condition to success in such study, that the sciences should be learned in this their natural order, to the infringement of which rule is ascribed the present incoherent aspect of scientific culture ("some sciences being in the positive, some in the supernatural, and some in the metaphysical stage," with minute self-contradictory subdivisions). First: the Mathematical sciences-since in them the ideas dealt with are the most entirely abstract possible in positive philosophy, "for nowhere else are questions resolved so completely, and deductions prolonged so far with extreme rigour"-these deductions involving the greatest possible number of results from the smallest possible number of immediate data. Astronomy comes under this section, and is the only fundamental science (out of the five) which is allowed to be really and finally purged of all theological or metaphysical considerations-the only one thoroughly established as positive, and satisfactorily fulfilling the axiom that every science has prevision for its object. Second: the science of Physics, which, says Comte, did not begin definitely to disengage itself from metaphysics, and become really positive, until after the great discovery of Galileo on the fall of heavy bodies, and which is therefore considerably behind Astronomy (positive so many centuries ago) in its scientific precision. The positivists enlarge on the conception of a "luminiferous ether," that "prevailing hypothesis," almost universally accepted by men of science in England,-as illustrating the adulteration, by metaphysical myth, of the study of Physics-any such assumed fluid being in reality no more than one of the old entities materialised, a mere personified abstraction, a trifle lighter than air, and only to the dreamer giving "confirmation strong," while to the waking man it is obnoxious as standing, a shadowy pretence, between him and the sun. Third: Chemistrya science where the complexity of phenomena is greatly augmented-its aim being, to find the properties of all the compounds of all (given) simple substances-its study, especially interesting as compensating for deficiency in the "prevision of phenomena" by "the power of modifying them at our pleasure." Here, too, metaphysical parasites are denounced, in the shape of "inherent vital forces," &c., hypotheses which positivism cannot away with. Fourth Physiology, or Biology, or the science of Life-the necessary basis of psychology, and to the development of which M. Comte contributes "a new cerebral theory." Fifth Social science -its principle being, that social phenomena are inevitably subjected to natural laws, in accordance with the axiom of Leibnitz, "The present is pregnant with the future;"-as a statical science, investigating the laws of co-existence (which characterise the idea of social Order), and as a dynamical, the laws of succession (which pertain to the theory of Progress). "Sociology thus unites the two equally fundamental ideas of Order and Progress, the radical opposition of which" constitutes "the principal characteristic symptom of the profound perturbation of modern society." And whereas hitherto there has been a division kept up between physical laws and moral laws-the former being monopolised by one set of teachers, and the latter by another-M. Comte claims to have healed the breach, and identified the interests, by his foundation of social science. Such, in rough and ragged outline, is Positivism. Such the philosophy which, if destined to dominion,* must sweep away the landmarks of our *In reply to the damaging remark by Sir W. Hamilton, that it is rather surprising Comte should begin to be taken up in England just as he is being given up in his own country, Mr. Lewes asserts, that, so far from his reputation declining in France, it is now beginning to assume importance, and to attract the adhesion of France's most markworthy physiologists, Béraud, Robin, Littré, Verdeil, &c.,-while the demand for his voluminous works of itself speaks |