AUTHORITIES. 1. The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte. By George Henry Lewes. 2 vols. 3d edition. London: 1867. 2. Cours de Philosophie Positive. Par M. Aug. Comte. Tomes I.-VI. Paris: 1830-1842. 3. Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive. Par E. Littré. Paris: 1863. 4. A General View of Positivism. Auguste Comte. By Dr Bridges. Translated from the French of 5. The Catechism of Positive Religion. Translated from the French of Auguste Comte. By Richard Congreve. London: 1858. 6. Auguste Comte and Positivism. By John Stuart Mill. 1865. London: 7. The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrine. By Dr Bridges. London: 1866. AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. MR R LEWES is a very clever writer. He has handled many subjects, and he has handled them well—with the adroit competency characteristic of a keen, ready, versatile, and variously, if not profoundly, informed mind. He is littérateur, biographer, man of science, and philosopher. In all these capacities he is known as an author; in all he has achieved considerable reputation: it may be questioned whether in any of them he has reached the highest rank in literature. His 'Life of Goethe' and his History of Philosophy' he would himself probably put forward as his chief claims to distinction, and it would be a niggard criticism which did not acknowledge the great merits of both these productions.1 There is no biography of the German poet at once more ample and interesting; there is no his 1 This was written before the series of philosophical volumes, beginning with 'Problems of Mind,' which crowned the varied labours of Mr Lewes's life. Elaborate and full of thought as these volumes are, I do not think that they call for any qualification of the estimate pronounced or implied in this paper on Mr Lewes as a thinker. tory of philosophy so compact, diversified, and entertaining. Withal, there is wanting to either the higher touch of power which gives unity and creative life to a book. The biography lacks inspiration; the history, seriousness and faith. 6 The third edition of the second of these works is now before us-an old friend with a new face. The 'Biographical History of Philosophy,' which charmed us twenty years ago, and fed a youthful taste for philosophic generalities and the affinities of speculative thought, has been turned into the History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte.' The slight duodecimos of 'Knight's Weekly Series for all Readers' have been converted into two bulky octavos. We are fain to confess that we prefer our friend with his old face. Mr Lewes has greatly expanded, and in some degree enriched, his early volumes. He has given elaborate prolegomena, rewritten many chapters -those on Plato and Aristotle, also those on Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and others; he has inserted a "Transition Period " between Ancient and Modern Speculation, containing chapters on "Scholasticism" and "Arabian Philosophy"; and significantly from his own point of view he has added an "Eleventh Epoch" to his modern historical outline devoted to "Auguste Comte" and the "Positive Philosophy." In doing all this, it would be absurd to say that he has not added to the value of his work. Mr Lewes's mature studies on Plato and Aristotle-especially the latter, on whom he has recently written a special work-are more important than his early and comparatively hasty sketches of these great thinkers. But it may be fairly questioned whether he has, after all, imparted to his work a higher character, and made it more profound and erudite as a whole, while he has certainly impaired the freshness of its original outline and the vivacity of its biographic movement. It has ceased to be a book for the general reader and the young student of philosophy; it has not become a book for the masters of philosophy. It may be even questioned whether some of the chapters which have been rewritten have been in all respects improved. They are "graver and fuller"; but we miss, with regret, the old dash and liveliness of portraiture which marked particularly such chapters as those on Bacon and Spinoza. Then the radical bias of the book appears all the more conspicuous in the extended plan of treatment. Whatever be the value of the great Positivist conception, it is not the fitting inspiration for a serious survey of the course of metaphysical speculation. A History of Philosophy,' written to show that philosophy, in the usual sense, is from first to last an illusion, "mere energy wasted on insoluble problems," seems more absurd in two large elaborate volumes than in a series of rapid sketches. We are bound also to say, with all respect for Mr Lewes's talents, that his present volumes retain many of his old faults of treatment. Softened and toned down, they are yet there the same jerky and self-confident audacity, the same virulent misconceptions of theology, the same "question-begging," both in epithet and in argument, as flagrant as the worst or best of his school; while with all the additions he has made, his omissions are still numerous and significant, particularly in recent metaphysical literature, which cannot be said to be represented at all. In short, while the book has gained much, it has not gained adequately, and it has lost a good deal. It has lost its old character of a philosophic sketch-book, full of graphic vivid outlines, many of them imperfect, but all dashed with a certain fascinating boldness and freedom of handling; and it has not acquired the proportions, gravity, fairness, and width of a complete history. But it is not our present intention to review Mr. Lewes's work. We have turned to it with a special object. The recent publication of his third edition, with his extended treatment of the Positive Philosophy, invites us to a consideration of some of the pretensions of this vaunted system. Than Mr Lewes, Positivism has no more earnest, intrepid, or persevering advocate in England. Some are more fanatical in their devotion, and have resigned their reason and judgment more entirely to the thoughts of the great master; others, like Mr John S. Mill, less affiliated to the system, have expounded it, in our view, with a higher, or at least a more discriminating success; but there is no one who has been more faithful to it in his whole mode of thought, or who has more frequently recurred to its characteristic ideas, and explained them with more clearness, comprehension, and force. It has been Mr Lewes's mission to develop and spread these ideas in opposition to the old modes of thought, as the destined means of regenerating human knowledge and society. His sense, and perhaps in some degree his perception of the ludicrous, have kept him from adopting the extravagances embodied in the 'Religion of Humanity'; a keen naturalism, which crops out more or less in all his writings, and a certain native light 1 |