If this is so, then our Essays have, in a way too imperfect, yet brought us to the end, where morality is removed and survives in its fulfilment. In our journey we have not seen much, and much that we have seen was perhaps little worth the effort, or might have been had without it. Be that as it may, the hunt after pleasure in any shape has proved itself a delusion, and the form of duty a snare, and the finite realization of ‘my station’ was truth indeed, and a happiness that called to us to stay, but was too narrow to satisfy wholly the spirit’s hunger; and ideal morality brought the sickening sense of inevitable failure. Here where we are landed at last, the process is at an end, though the best activity here first begins. Here our morality is consummated in oneness with God, and everywhere we find that ‘immortal Love,’ which builds itself for ever on contradiction, but in which the contradiction is eternally resolved.
| Hic nullus labor est, ruborque nullus ; Hoc juvit, juvat, et diu juvabit ; Hoc non deficit, incipitque semper. |
Note.—While these last sheets were going through the press, Mr. Harrison’s article (Cont. Rev., May 1876) appeared, and touches so nearly on much that I have said, that it seems advisable to make some remarks upon it, taking it as it stands, and without any reference to Comte’s own views, with which I am not acquainted.
What I have to remark first is, that with the leading idea of Mr. Harrison’s creed, a man may be familiar, and substantially, perhaps, in agreement, without having come into contact, direct or indirect, with Positivism. Whoever may claim to have originated it, it was distinctly set forth forty years ago by Strauss, in intimate connection with the speculative metaphysic of the first quarter of the century. (See an interesting article in the same number of the C. R.) It took its place in German literature as a metaphysical interpretation of the central doctrine of Christianity.
Mr. Harrison appears to believe that in his case the element of metaphysic at least is absent. And here, I think, he makes a great mistake. For what is implied in his credo? He seems to hold that humanity is the evolution of an organic whole, while at the same time he asserts that it is ‘a collective unity,’ and that its evolution is ‘a collective evolution.’ Here we are at once in the
