public utterances of his as I have read of late years, fervid in their eloquence, persuaded me that he had become a much warmer adherent. On his summary mode of dealing with my criticism of the Comtean creed some comment is called for. He remarks that there are "good reasons for declining to discuss with Mr. Spencer the writings of Comte;" and names, as the first, "that he knows [I know] nothing whatever about them" (p. 365). Now as Mr. Harrison is fully aware that thirty years ago I reviewed the English version of those parts of the Positive Philosophy which treat of Mathematics, Astronomy and Physics; and as he has referred to the pamphlet in which, ten years later, I quoted a number of passages from the original to signalize my grounds of dissent from Comte's system; I am somewhat surprised by this statement, and by the still more emphatic statement that to me "the writings of Comte are, if not the Absolute Unknowable, at any rate the Absolute Unknown" (p. 365). Doubtless these assertions are effective; but like many effective assertions they do not sufficiently recognize the facts. The remaining statements in this division of Mr. Harrison's argument, I pass over: not because answers equally adequate with those I have thus far given do not exist, but because I can not give them without entering upon personal questions which I prefer to avoid.
On the closing part of "Agnostic Metaphysics" containing Mr. Harrison's own version of the Religion of Humanity, I have to remark, as I find others remarking, that it amounts, if not to an abandonment of his original position, still to an entire change of front. Anxious, as he has professed himself, to retain the "magnificent word Religion" (p. 504), it now appears that when "the Religion of Humanity" is spoken of, the usual connotations of the word are to be in large measure dropped: to give it these connotations is "to foist in theological ideas where none are suggested by us" (p. 369). While, in his first article, one of the objections raised to the "neo-theisms" as well as "the Unknowable," was that there is offered "no relation whatever between worshipper and worshipped" (p. 505) (an objection tacitly implying that Mr. Harrison's religion supplies this relation), it now appears that Humanity is not to be worshipped in any ordinary sense; but that by worship is simply meant "intelligent love and respect for our human brotherhood," and that "in plain words, the Religion of Humanity means recognizing your duty to your fellow-man on human grounds" (p. 369). Certainly this is much less than what I and others supposed to be included in Mr. Harrison's version of the Religion of Humanity. If he preaches nothing more than an ecstatic philanthropy, few will object; but most will say that his name for it conveyed to them a much wider meaning. Passing over all this, however, I am concerned chiefly to point out another extreme misrepresentation made by Mr. Harrison when discussing my criticism of Comte's assertion that "veneration and gratitude" are due to the
