ht be left as self-disproved, were it not that
speculators of this class are not alarmed by any amount of incongruity
with established beliefs. The only efficient mode of treating systems
like this of Hegel, is to show that they are self-destructive--that by
their first steps they ignore that authority on which all their
subsequent steps depend. If Hegel professes, as he manifestly does, to
develop his scheme by reasoning--if he presents successive inferences as
_necessarily following_ from certain premises; he implies the postulate
that a belief which necessarily follows after certain antecedents is a
true belief: and, did an opponent reply to one of his inferences, that,
though it was impossible to think the opposite, yet the opposite was
true, he would consider the reply irrational. The procedure, however,
which he would thus condemn as destructive of all thinking whatever, is
just the procedure exhibited in the enunciation of his own first
principles.

Mankind find themselves unable to conceive that there can be thought
without things thought of. Hegel, however, asserts that there _can_ be
thought without things thought of. That ultimate test of a true
proposition--the inability of the human mind to conceive the negation of
it--which in all other cases he considers valid, he considers invalid
where it suits his convenience to do so; and yet at the same time denies
the right of an opponent to follow his example. If it is competent for
him to posit dogmas, which are the direct negations of what human
consciousness recognises; then is it also competent for his antagonists
to stop him at every step in his argument by saying, that though the
particular inference he is drawing seems to his mind, and to all minds,
necessarily to follow from the premises, yet it is not true, but the
contrary inference is true. Or, to state the dilemma in another
form:--If he sets out with inconceivable propositions, then may he with
equal propriety make all his succeeding propositions inconceivable
ones--may at every step throughout his reasoning draw exactly the
opposite conclusion to that which seems involved.

Hegel's mode of procedure being thus essentially suicidal, the Hegelian
classification which depends upon it falls to the ground. Let us
consider next that of M. Comte.

As all his readers must admit, M. Comte presents us with a scheme of the
sciences which, unlike the foregoing ones, demands respectful
consideration. Widely as