Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/220

 doubt, had concerned themselves much about super-naturalities, immortalities, and such like childish things, according as they were in the theological or metaphysical stage; but they had all agreed in this, "to live not for themselves, but for others."

Here then, is the "Open sesame" of the future. The pillars which support the great fane of Humanity are three,—Affection, Order, Progress: the first representing the principle; the second, the basis; the third, the end of the new creed. And whosoever builds on any other foundation, let him be anathema maranatha. Not quite so strong as that, perhaps, but still not far from it; for good Comtists attribute the sum of political strifes and social miseries to the conflict which necessarily arises from the fact that large masses of mankind are some of them still in the theological, some in the metaphysical, and only an elect few in the positive, stage of belief. Until all have been brought into the positive fold, war's and rumors of wars are inevitable. Like other millenniums, alas! that of the positivists has been postponed sine die, and to a necessarily distant day too.

I should be sorry indeed if any one were to suppose that the above is other than the faintest outline of the creed of which the learned professor of history in University College, London, is so devoted and fearless an exponent. It cost him ten years' patient study to attain to settled convictions on the subject, and even yet he is not in the priesthood of positivism. He is only a sort of lay deacon, or stalworth doorkeeper, at the Temple of Humanity. This being so, I feel that it is not a little presumptuous in me, who have given but little attention to this new and most difficult of cults,