the greatest aptitude for association, and the freest access for our propaganda. With the exception of some individual conversions, as rare as they are valuable, the Religion of Humanity has not yet reached the southern constituents of the West, and yet it is with them that it will ultimately attain its greatest popularity. In the provinces of France, it has but three secondary centres; contrary to my hopes, these remain purely in the nascent state, and have no importance as yet save what attaches to their respective heads.

The extension of the sacerdotal fund, set forth in the Fifth Circular, is a measure of the growth of Positivism. With the exception of the centre and the two nuclei, that fund' is principally drawn from individual subscriptions, and there are but few of them as yet in the British public, though Positivism is widely known. Its English adherents are too abstract, and are content to propagate the new philosophy without helping its founder to meet the privations he suffers from an infamous act of spoliation. Their indifference is thrown into stronger light by the conduct of the noble opponents who, in the midst of the most anarchical of Western nations, feel it a social obligation to assist anyone who worthily devotes himself to the task of spiritual reorganisation. In spite of this honourable exception, the security due to the continuous increase of the sacerdotal fund is owing to its coming mainly from complete Positivists, now that the revolutionists have fortunately given me up.

Their conduct in this respect reminds me of the confirmation given by two characteristic facts to the anticipations, as stated in the preface to the third volume, of the growing hostility of the party towards me. The aversion which Positivism excites in the minds of the German or British metaphysicians may vent itself in discussions, because they consider themselves competent to discuss the new synthesis. But the revolutionary party in France, too conscious of its incompetence for such an effort, can gratify its hatred only by calumnies, the object being to lead the people to turn away from me without examination. They have spoken of my address to the Czar as a

dedication of the third volume; forgetting that the whole work was from the very beginning placed under a patronage which excludes any other homage. The same party again I hold responsible for the hypothesis-I have no language to express it-which assigns misconduct on my part as the ground of my persecution at the École Polytechnique: degraded, in its own way, as the body which robbed me is, it would not venture on such a calumny from fear of its easy refutation.

Such are the arms to which, in its struggle with the religion of order and progress, is reduced the most noxious and the most belated of existing parties. It alone denies the need of a spiritual reconstruction, which it feels itself incapable of giving; it bends its efforts to concentrate the aspirations of the people on the direct attainment of material reforms, and these reforms are principally destructive. Unacquainted with the more important advances made in the nineteenth century, it would solve the difficulties of the West with the religion of Voltaire, the philosophy of Condillac, the moral system of Helvetius and the political theory of Rousseau, rejecting Hume, Diderot, and Condorcet.

Little ground is there for surprise if, with the exception of younger minds, estimable though mistaken, all men of any value are more and more abandoning a party which is under a radical misconception as to the work to be done. I am glad to say here that, after the hesitation mentioned in the preface to Volume IIL, M. Étex seems to be definitively under the influence of the tendencies to synthesis and sympathy which originally led him to Positivism. At a time when everyone oscillates and rebels, there is a special ground for excuse in the case of artists, more impulsive and less fettered than the theoricians and practicians.

Such is a sufficient explanation of the points peculiar to this preface. I must use it to discharge an extraordinary obligation imposed on me by the manifesto annexed to its predecessor. The books intended to be sent were not sent, no answer whatever having been received to the note which I mentioned,

asking for the proper authorisation. However, this act of rudeness from a ruler absorbed in the Greek Empire does not interfere with the communication; it may be considered to have taken place now that my third volume is published.

I feel no regret at having taken the Czar Nicholas as a type of the conservative, who being empirical might become systematic. The judgment may be too favourable of him; if so, it may suit his successor, adapted as it is to the position which they fill. My choice of such a mode for bringing under the notice of eminent practicians a complete summary of Positivism, shows how completely I have risen above revolutionary prejudices and habits. So far as the anarchists are concerned, the Russian war has only enabled them to give free scope to the dislike they feel for a manifesto calculated to facilitate the propagation of the regenerative doctrine. Be this as it may, the letter was a real event, which in its historical character I shall be bound always to respect, even if ultimately obliged entirely to alter my judgment of the present Emperor of Russia.

But blameable as his foreign policy is at present, it may not cancel as yet the honourable efforts of a quarter of a century to better the internal condition of his immense empire. The favourable character of my original opinion warrants me in warning the Czar that, by persistence in his error, he will annul in the judgment of posterity the claims accumulated by a long career. This is the danger to which all practicians are exposed, from their services being transitory in nature and limited in extent, and therefore seldom of such value as not to be effaced by really grave misconduct. Intellectual results, as of wider range and greater permanence, alone ensure a distinction which no subsequent degeneracy of their authors can effect. Therefore it is that the practician can rarely be judged in his lifetime, whereas the theorician need not wait for death to bring him an indestructible glory, supposing his work admits of an adequate judgment.

Were the conduct of Russia an aberration of the nation, I should not be justified in attempting here to set it right. But

in spite of appearances, I persist in believing that, as indicated in my previous preface, the error is the error of the individual, and lies in his not withstanding the foolish and guilty impulses of his misguided advisers. As a consequence of the disastrous policy originated by a misdirected energy, the Czars live in the midst of German adventurers; and it is these adventurers alone who are urging the Russian nation to attempt a conquest, the great object of which is to secure for themselves in the south more advantageous grants than their northern domains. The suggestions of these adventurers, having no root in the popular feeling, might at any time cease under an Emperor of energy, prior to their occasioning struggles with other nations such as those by which they have been hitherto kept down. We must hope, then, that wise remonstrances will determine the Czar Nicholas to desist from an encroachment at variance with his own tendencies, and more unwise than at any former time.

One conclusive comparison ought to suffice to enlighten the Czar on the danger of his attitude, which is in direct opposition with the whole current of ideas prevalent in this century. The heir of the dictator who disturbed all Europe for the gratification of his misguided ambition formally acknowledges that the age of conquests is closed for ever. Whereas the successor of the autocrat who broke by a noble effort the yoke which had become intolerable, stains his mature years by an act of usurpation analogous to that against which he fought in his youth. Retrograde abroad, the latter tends to be retrogade at home; whilst the former, by regenerating his foreign, will be shortly led to modify his home, policy. Forty years ago, the West coalesced against the compression exercised by the French nation; it is now rallying under its leadership to check the encroachments of a power which at that time directed the Holy Alliance, the avowed object of which was to found universal peace.

The whole past of Russia should show the Czar the radical flaw in his present aberration, and at the same time calm the Western nations as to its real danger. Whilst yet heathen, the Eastern Scandinavians attempted the conquest of the Greek

Empire, and were repulsed by its unaided forces. By embracing Byzantine Christianity, they signified their acceptance of the law of permanence in regard to their settlement, just as their Western brothers did by the adoption of Catholicism. By such acceptance they devoted themselves essentially to peaceful activity, and they lost at once their enthusiasm and their discipline under the influence of an abortive monotheism. Whilst Catholicism and Islam sanctioned, the first, the separation, the second, the fusion of the two powers, Byzantinism never reached any social result, in consequence of the radical contradiction between its dogma and its regime.

To place in its true light the Russian disturbance, we must explain how it runs directly counter to the whole course of the international policy, which since the close of the Middle Ages more and more secures the status quo. The judicious efforts of modern diplomacy have regulated the relations of the different nations as far as they could, considering the decay of the Western priesthood. Uninterrupted by the great struggles of Europe, the influence of diplomacy has always strengthened the dispositions and habits of peace by insisting upon a mutual respect for the actual situation, whatever it was. With a sound instinct, it refers to the Peace of Westphalia, as the decisive era from which dates the salutary power which is vested in it, till such time as the spiritual power of Positivism shall have definitively reorganised the West. It was in truth a noble triumph, the division then effected of the West between Catholicism and Protestantism, by the prevention or repression of all attempts to secure by arms the supremacy of any one of the beliefs which arose out of the spontaneous decomposition of the mediaval defensive Monotheism.

These various faiths have been a constant source of division not only for nations, but for towns and even families, yet the diplomatists have everywhere attained this result: that the powers have renounced, as a point of their external policy, all attempts to restore unity, its re-establishment being left solely to religious efforts. A line of action such as this, grounded on