mong these ideas that
we have to look for the representation in their most direct, logical,
uncompromising, and unmistakable form of those theological ways of
regarding life and prescribing right conduct, whose more or less rapidly
accelerated destruction is the first condition of the further elevation
of humanity, as well in power of understanding as in morals and
spirituality. In all contests of this kind there is the greatest and
most obvious advantage in being able to see your enemy full against the
light. Thirdly, in one or two respects, the Catholic reactionaries at
the beginning of the century insisted very strongly on principles of
society which the general thought of the century before had almost
entirely dropped out of sight, and which we who, in spite of many
differences, still sail down the same great current, and are propelled
by the same great tide, are accustomed almost equally either to leave in
the background of speculation, or else deliberately to deny and
suppress. Such we may account the importance which they attach to
organisation, and the value they set upon a common spiritual faith and
doctrine as a social basis. That the form which the recognition of these
principles is destined to assume will at all correspond to their hopes
and anticipations, is one of the most unlikely things possible. This,
however, need not detract from the worth for our purpose of their
exposition of the principles themselves. Again, the visible traces of
the impression made by the writings of this school on the influential
founder of the earliest Positivist system, are sufficiently deep and
important to make some knowledge of them of the highest historical
interest, both to those who accept and those who detest that system.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were three chief
schools of thought, the Sensational, the Catholic, and the Eclectic; or
as it may be put in other terms, the Materialist, the Theological, and
the Spiritualist. The first looked for the sources of knowledge, the
sanction of morals, the inspiring fountain and standard of aesthetics, to
the outside of men, to matter, and the impressions made by matter on the
corporeal senses. The second looked to divine revelation, authority and
the traditions of the Church. The third, steering a middle course,
looked partly within and partly without, relied partly on the senses,
partly on revelation and history, but still more on a certain internal
consc