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HE Kantian philosophy which announced itself as "prolegomena to all future metaphysics," was, by malicious intent, a murderous thrust at traditional modes of speculation; and, contrary to intent, a damaging blow to all metaphysics whatsoever. For metaphysics had meant, throughout the history of thought, an attempt to discover the ultimate nature of reality; now men learned, on the most respectable authority, that reality could never be experienced; that it was a "noumenon," conceivable but not knowable; and that even the subtlest human intelligence could never pass beyond phenomena, could never pierce the veil of Maya. The metaphysical extravagances of Fichte, Hegel and Schelling, with their various readings of the ancient riddle, their Ego and Idea and Will, had canceled one another into zero; and by the eighteen-thirties the universe was generally conceded to have guarded its secret well. After a generation of Absolute intoxication, the mind of Europe reacted by taking a pledge against metaphysics of any kind.

Since the French had made a specialty of scepticism, it was natural that they should produce the founder (if there are such persons in philosophy, where every idea is hallowed with years) of the "positivist" movement. Auguste Comte—or, as his parents called him, Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte—was born at Montpellier in 1798. The idol of his youth was Benjamin Franklin, whom he called the modern Socrates. "You know that at five-and-twenty he formed the design of becoming perfectly wise, and that he