and history of Truth_, considered as the object of human
knowledge. It is a favorite opinion with him, that man can have no
_absolute_ knowledge; that truth is not fixed, but fluctuating; that
what was believed in one age, and believed _necessarily_, according to
the fundamental laws of thought, is as necessarily disbelieved in the
next; and that there is no standard of truth at any time better or surer
than the public opinion, or general consent, of the most advanced
classes of society.[90] This theory of Truth, as necessarily mobile and
fluctuating, has a tendency, we think, to engender universal skepticism,
even when it is stated, with various important modifications, by such
writers as Lamennais and Morell; but, in the hands of M. Comte, it
becomes more dangerous still, since it represents the human race as
having been from the beginning, through a long series of ages, subject
to a law of development which not only _permitted_, but actually
_compelled_ them to believe a lie; and thus casts a dark shade of
suspicion both on the constitution of man and on the government of God.

Such a theory would seem also to preclude all rational calculations
respecting the future progress and prospects of the race. For what
ground can exist for any prognostication in regard to the ulterior
advancement or ultimate destiny of man, if it be true that, in his past
history, Fetishism has passed into Polytheism, and Polytheism into
Monotheism, without any extraneous instruction, and by the mere action
of those inherent laws to which humanity is subject? And, still more, if
it be further true that even now the human mind is in a state of
transition, passing through the crisis of Metaphysical doubt towards the
goal of Positive Atheism, who shall assure us that this will be its last
and final metamorphosis? It does appear to us to be one of the most
singular and perplexing anomalies of his elaborate system, that he can
dogmatize so confidently on the _terminus ad quem_ of human progress,
when from the _terminus a quo_ there has been, according to his own
account, a series of variations so wonderful, and a succession of states
so diverse and opposite, as those which he describes. And yet he
pronounces oracularly that Positive Science is the ultimate
landing-place of human thought, and that universal Atheism is the final
barrier which must needs close and terminate the long series of
developments.

We have spoken sternly of his system; we