vation, is pronounced a delusion. The immediate consciousness
of freedom is a dream. Such a procedure, to say the least of it, is
highly unphilosophical; to say the truth about it, it is obviously
dishonest. Every fact of human nature, just as much as every fact of
physical nature, must be accepted in all its integrity, or all must be
alike rejected. The phenomena of mind can no more be disregarded than
the phenomena of matter. Rational intuitions, necessary and universal
beliefs, can no more be ignored than the uniform facts of
sense-perception, without rendering a system of knowledge necessarily
incomplete, and a system of truth utterly impossible. Every one truth is
connected with every other truth in the universe. And yet Comte demands
that a large class of facts, the most immediate and direct of all our
cognitions, shall be rejected because they are not in harmony with the
fundamental assumption of the positive philosophy that all knowledge is
confined to _phenomena perceptible to sense_. Now it were just as easy
to cast the Alps into the Mediterranean as to obliterate from the human
intelligence the primary cognitions of immediate consciousness, or to
relegate the human reason from the necessary laws of thought. Comte
himself can not emancipate his own mind from a belief in the validity of
the testimony of consciousness. How can he know himself as distinct from
nature, as a living person, as the same being he was ten years ago, or
even yesterday, except by an appeal to consciousness? Despite his
earnestly-avowed opinions as to the inutility and fallaciousness of all
psychological inquiries, he is compelled to admit that "the phenomena of
life" are "_known by immediate consciousness_."[253] Now the knowledge
of our personal freedom rests on precisely the same grounds as the
knowledge of our personal existence. The same "immediate consciousness"
which attests that I exist, attests also, with equal distinctness and
directness, that I am self-determined and free.

[Footnote 252: "The _inevitable tendency_ of our intelligence is towards
a philosophy radically theological, so often as we seek to penetrate, on
whatever pretext, into the intimate nature of phenomena" (vol. iv. p.
664).]

[Footnote 253: "Positive Philos," vol. ii. p. 648.]

In common with most atheistical writers, Comte is involved in the fatal
contradiction of at one time assuming, and at another of denying the
freedom of the will, to serve the exigenci