We gather from a sermon of Dr. Bridges, printed byWyman,
of Great Queen Street, and preached "on the 1st Moses, in the 91st year of the Western Revolution," at "the Eleusis Club, Chelsea," that there is a split in the rank, or rather ranklet, of the Positivists. Some of the English Positivists give in their adhesion to the French high-priest of Positivism, M. Laffitte, while others remain loyal to the English high-priest, Mr. Con- greve. The schism appears to concern the relative value to be attached to scientific and to moral culture respectively, the French high-priest,—according to the rumour,—attaching more value to pure science, while the English high-priest lays the greater stress on pure morality. As the schism, so far as it con- cerns the English Positivists, splits a Church of perhaps seven- teen members or thereabouts into two sections, one of which may henceforth be without a leader, the English people will scarcely be convulsed by the news. But we confess ourselves curious to observe the effect produced on the ineffable authoritativeness of Positivist dogma. Will the philosophic egotism of each frag- ment rise as high as that of the former whole ? Will the Church whose Delphi is in Paris promulgate oracles as imposing as the Church whose Delphi is in London, or will a vestige of humility touch either, or both P For ourselves, we imagine that, if the Positivist Church resolved itself into its atoms, so that each Positivist had to become his own high-priest, the authori- tative grandeur of the individual egotisms would not be per- ceptibly impaired.
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