no greater admission than that God had put the world in motion. The
principles of Des Cartes, clustering around this opinion, have never
lost their hold upon the French mind, and are now influencing it to a
remarkable degree.

Cartesianism gained new power by the agency of the Eclectic School,
whose champions were Royer-Collard, Maine de Biran, Cousin, and
Jouffroy. Their great achievement was the unification of the
philosophical systems of Germany and Scotland. But the Eclectics are now
in a state of dissolution.

Positivism, as a subordinate system, is the work of Comte alone. This,
too, is every year losing its hold upon the land of its birth. Its
fundamental principle is, that in virtue of an inner law of development
of the mind, the whole human race will gradually emancipate itself from
all religion and metaphysics, and substitute for the worship of God that
of love of humanity, or a mundane religion. The law of development
consists in the psychological experience that all the ideas and
cognitions of the human mind have necessarily to pass through the three
stages of theology, metaphysics, and positivism. It is only when it
arrives at the stand-point of absolutely positive, or mathematically
exact knowledge, that human thought attains its goal of perfection. The
religion of mankind is divided into three stages; fetichism, polytheism,
and monotheism. Its representatives are Judaism, Mohammedanism, and
Christianity. Catholicism is better suited than any other form of
religion to the perfect development of human society. The Christian
world is now in the transitory stage of metaphysics, which, by and by,
will lead to the golden age of Positivism. This is the absolute
religion, or the worship of humanity, which needs no God or revelation.

While Comte has so deeply impressed the thinking circles of France that
his opinions are still perceptible in the doctrines of the Liberal
Party, another great agent has been operating upon the young,
uneducated, and laboring classes. We refer to the light French novel, or
_feuilleton_ literature. Such writers as Sue, George Sand, and Dumas,
father and son, have published many volumes which were issued in cheap
style, and afterward scattered profusely over the land. These works have
been extensively read, not only in France, but in all parts of the
Continent, Great Britain, and the United States. A recent traveler has
averred that he found many persons perusing them in the reading