worthy form of immortality. Clearly
it is only the caricature of prayer or of the desire of immortality
which rises before Comte's mind as the thing to be escaped. For this
caricature religious men, both Catholic and Protestant, without doubt,
gave him cause. There were to be seven sacraments, corresponding to
seven significant epochs in a man's career. There were to be priests for
the performance of these sacraments and for the inculcation of the
doctrines of positivism. There were to be temples of humanity, affording
opportunity for and reminder of this worship. In each temple there was
to be set up the symbol of the positivist religion, a woman of thirty
years with her little son in her arms. Littre spoke bitterly of the
positivist religion as a lapse of the author into his old aberration.
This religion was certainly regarded as negligible by many to whom his
system as a whole meant a great deal. At least, it is an interesting
example, as is also his transformation of science into a philosophy, of
the resurgence of valid elements in life, even in the case of a man who
has made it his boast to do away with them.

NATURALISM AND AGNOSTICISM

We may take Spencer as representative of a group of men who, after the
middle of the nineteenth century, laboured enthusiastically to set forth
evolutionary and naturalistic theories of the universe. These theories
had also, for the most part, the common trait that they professed
agnosticism as to all that lay beyond the reach of the
natural-scientific methods, in which the authors were adept. Both Ward
and Boutroux accept Spencer as such a type. Agnosticism for obvious
reasons could be no system. Naturalism is a tendency in interpretation
of the universe which has many ramifications. There is no intention of
making the reference to one man's work do more than serve as
introduction to the field.

Spencer was eager in denial that he had been influenced by Comte. Yet
there is a certain reminder of Comte in Spencer's monumental endeavour
to systematise the whole mass of modern scientific knowledge, under the
general title of 'A Synthetic Philosophy.' He would show the unity of
the sciences and their common principles or, rather, the one great
common principle which they all illustrate, the doctrine of evolution,
as this had taken shape since the time of Darwin. Since 1904 we have an
autobiography of Herbert Spencer, which, to be sure, seems largely to
have been written prior to