manifestly impossible for any
habits of feeling and thinking, in given modes in given circumstances,
to be common to any two generations of men, still less to universal
mankind. In other words, there cannot possibly be any laws of human
nature: and if no laws of human nature, then no laws of elementary
social facts; and if no laws of elementary social facts, then no laws of
complex social facts; and if no laws of social facts, elementary or
complex, then no single particle of material wherewith to build up the
Science of Society or Sociology.

[49] 'Auguste Comte and Positivism,' pp. 133-4.

CHAPTER VI.

_LIMITS OF DEMONSTRABLE THEISM._

Thought without Reverence is barren. The man who cannot wonder, who
does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of
innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole _Mecanique
Celeste_ and Hegel's _Philosophy_, and the epitome of all
laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single
head, is but a pair of spectacles, behind which there is no eye.
Let those who have eyes look through him; then he may be
useful.--_Sartor Resartus._

'I wouldn't mind,' said once a representative of extreme heterodoxy, in
debate with a champion of its diametrical opposite--'I wouldn't mind
conceding the Deity you contend for, were it not for the use commonly
made of him after he is conceded.' And no doubt that use is such as
might well provoke a saint, provided the saint were likewise a
philosopher. To whatever extent it be true that man was created in the
image of God, it is certain that in all ages and countries God has been
created in the image of man, invested with all human propensities,
appetites, and passions, and expected to demean himself on all occasions
as men would do in like circumstances. As popularly conceived, so long
as sensual gratification was esteemed to be the _summum bonum_, he
wallowed in all manner of sensual lust; when some of his more fervent
worshippers turned ascetics out of disgust with fleshly surfeit, he
became ascetism personified: at every stage his great delight has been
flattery, and his still greater, revenge; in the exercise of power he
has always been capricious and often wanton--ruthlessly vindictive
against impugners of his honour and dignity, unspeakably barbarous to
unbelievers in his reality. Now, as knowledge advanced, unbelief in a
God so much below the level of ordinarily virtu