in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we
can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with
me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with
which it is, or _was_, connected.

All this "craves wary walking." It is a trying course, this _method_,
for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it
imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and
well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that
leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of
steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem,
by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to
Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on
earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it
rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable
abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our
intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the
fantastic, inexplicable interval.

We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of
_Physique Social_. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if
our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall
reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the
work--perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole--where, in order
to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte
enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more
or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being
to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of
organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the
purpose of exposition will allow:--

"It is impossible to deny that the political world is
intellectually in a deplorable condition. All our ideas of
_order_ are hitherto solely borrowed from the ancient system of
religious and military power, regarded especially in its
constitution, catholic and feudal; a doctrine which, from the
philosophic point of view of this treatise, represents
incontestably the _theologic_ state of the social science. All
our ideas of _progress_ continue to be exclusively deduced from
a philosophy purely negative, which, issuing from
Protestantism, has taken in the last