sm; and the second is, that the individual is, in
this respect, the type or pattern of his race, and that the experience
of the one is only an outline in miniature of the history of the other.
It would be difficult, we think, to establish the truth of either of
these positions by evidence that could be satisfactory to any reflecting
mind. We cannot doubt, indeed, for experience amply attests, that the
religious sensibilities of childhood have often been sadly impaired in
the progress from youth to manhood, and that, after the tumultuous
excitements, whether of speculation or of passion, not a few have sought
a refuge from their fears in the cold negations of Atheism. But is this
the law of development and progress? Is it a law that is uniform and
invariable in its operation? Are there no instances of an opposite kind?
Are there no instances of men whose early religious culture had been
neglected, and who passed through youth without one serious thought of
God and their relation to Him, but who, as they advanced in years, began
to reflect and inquire, and ultimately attained to a firm religious
faith? If such diversities of individual experience are known to exist,
then clearly the result is not determined by any necessary or invariable
law of intellectual development; but must be ascribed to other causes,
chiefly of a moral and practical kind, which exert a powerful influence,
for good or evil, on every human mind. Montaigne speaks of an error
maintained by Plato, "that children and old people were most susceptible
of Religion, as if it sprung and derived its credit from our
weakness."[83] And we find M. Comte himself complaining, somewhat
bitterly, that his _quondam_ friend, the celebrated St. Simon, had
exhibited, as he advanced in years (_cette tendance banale vers une
vague religiosite_), a tendency towards something like Religion.[84]
Cases of this kind are utterly fatal to his supposed law of individual
development, and they must be equally fatal to his theory of the
progress of the human race.

Hitherto we have considered merely the reasons which M. Comte urges in
support of his theory, and have endeavored to show that they are utterly
incapable of establishing it as a valid scientific doctrine. It may be
useful, however, to advert, in conclusion, to some considerations which
afford decisive objections against it, arising from the testimony of
authentic history and the plainest principles of reason.

In so far a