John Morrison Davidson

“ His son Edward he found leisure to educate at home till the young man was of age to be entered as a student at nowise illustrious "Wadham," Oxford. This home training may in some measure account for the fact that the Englishman who in public life has most frequently and audaciously made light of the tenderest susceptibilities of all manner of reputable people "with gigs," is in the bosom of his family a model of gentleness and every domestic virtue. ”

“ In such evil times Radicals became Conservatives, and Conservatives ostensible Radicals. Mr. Beesly seems to me to forget that even a hateful middle class may be crushed at too great a cost. Like all Comtists, he is too partial to able men placed in authority by brute masses. ”

“ The professor in his class-room is always interesting. He is unconventional without being familiar, and he has a happy knack of presenting the purely human aspect of his subject, however far it may appear to be removed from the domain of current interests, which seldom fails to leave the desired impression. ”

“ He has scoffed at the respectability of our middle class, and treated our greatest plutocrats as if they were nobodies. In all things he is pre-eminently un-English, affirming, as he does, the immense superiority of Frenchmen and French institutions over Englishmen and English institutions. England' s function among the nations is merely to play the part of the "horrible example." She will do nothing at home that is not base and hypocritical; nothing abroad that is not tyrannical and suicidal. ”

“ This week I am in similar and greater peril; for, if it be one thing to face National Agricultural Unionism as the subject-matter of Radical effort, it is quite another to tackle the whole duty of man — the religion of humanity—as revealed in the fulness of these later times by Auguste Comte. ”

“ If one cannot accept his ideas, it is still necessary to revise one's own in the light of them; for, as Moses was fitted for his mission by being learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, so assuredly Auguste Comte was superlatively conversant with all modern sciences,—with astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology ”

“ There was one Rome built by the hands of many generations of Romans, and another built up by the imaginations of many generations of Quirites. This process of creating a divinity after their own image did not shock the Roman people. ”

“ The answer of primitive man—the theological answer—is, God breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, and they became living creatures. Then came the metaphysical explanation: they live because their blood is pervaded by a mysterious sublimated essence called "vital spirits," or "physiological units." Then at last the question why they live is given up as hopeless; and it is only asked how they live, and by what means the conditions of life can be modified for their profit or loss. This is the last or positive stage which is ultimately reached in every science. ”

“ They are where the most civilized peoples once were, straggling weary and footsore along the dusty highway of human progress, which all must tread. If they fall among thieves, it is ours to play the part of the good Samaritan, and lift them out of the ditch into which the footpads have cast them. ”

“ He would concentrate all our military and naval strength in and around Great Britain; and, having thus fortified the island by lopping off its rotten outlying members, the country would be in a position to enter on the discharge of international duties meet for civilization, conformable to the religion of humanity. England, along with France, would then be in a position to protect free Denmark, free Holland, free Belgium, from German or other autocratic aggression ”

“ The foundations of a true science of sociology might at last be confidently laid. The gods and the metaphysicians might now be safely, nay, advantageously, bowed out of the great Temple of Humanity, in appropriate niches of which should be placed such miscellaneous benefactors of the race as Moses, Christ, Mohammed, the Buddha, St. ”

“ The neo-imperialists, at all events, can hardly be expected to regard this as the "voice of sense and truth;" but it is unquestionably positive politics as understood by Auguste Comte, and his disciple is not the man to shrink from any of the consequences of his master's teaching. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is so much that is admirable, and so many things at the same time that traverse one's most cherished opinions,—prejudices, a Comtist would doubtless say,—in the system of Comte, that it becomes a matter of no ordinary difficulty to renew Mr. ”