'''' . 1'hiithirty-eighth anniversary of the death of Auguste Comte was Catelitated
on Thursday by a harangue from Mr. Frederic Harrison deAvered with due solemnity, though it appears to as the • anniversary of the close of a life which has never exerted any great influence on the world, and will exert less and less as time goes on. Mr. Harrison said that there were plain signs of the revival of Conservatism, but that as Posivitism has always recognised both Order and Pro- gress, there is no reason for Positivists to regret that Order is taking its turn in modifying the structure of society after a considerable reign of rather unrestrained progress. We do not fully understand how Positivists can regret anything which actually happens. They take their stand on the laws revealed by events, by facts, by actual experience; and if these events and facts and actual experiences indicate a revulsion of feeling in any people against progress, that must count as affecting the social law itself. Comte's 4` positivist " system seems to us a sort of deification of fact, just as his religion is a kind of deification of humanity. But how what Mr. Harrison calls a "frankly positive religion" can be a religion at all, is what we have never been able to understand. A religion should be something above us. But Positivism denies that there is anything as yet above us, though it may well be that the future,—which is beyond our reach,—may develop something higher than anything in the past or present.
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