Accordingly their names have come down
to us associated with grand thoughts, with most important discoveries,
and also with some of the most extravagantly wild and ludicrously absurd
conceptions and theories which ever were solemnly propounded by
thoughtful men. "We think M. Comte as great as either of these
philosophers, and hardly more extravagant. Were we to speak our whole
mind, we should call him superior to them: though not intrinsically, yet
by the exertion of equal intellectual power in a more advanced state of
human preparation; but also in an age less tolerant of palpable
absurdities, and to which those he has committed, if not in themselves
greater, at least appear more ridiculous.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the Chapter on Efficient Causes in Reid's "Essays on the Active
Powers," which is avowedly grounded on Newton's ideas.
[2] Mr Herbert Spencer, who also distinguishes between abstract and
concrete sciences, employs the terms in a different sense from that
explained above. He calls a science abstract when its truths are merely
ideal; when, like the truths of geometry, they are not exactly true of
real things--or, like the so-called law of inertia (the persistence in
direction and velocity of a motion once impressed) are "involved" in
experience but never actually seen in it, being always more or less
completely frustrated.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246