search that might have proved fruitless, the honor of writing these
lines has devolved upon me.

MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.




XI.

HIS RELATION TO POSITIVISM.[2]

The present course of lectures on a special subject has made no
pretension to present the religious aspect of Positivism, and I shall
not venture to intrude on one of its gravest functions the due
commemoration of the dead. But nothing that is spoken here should have
a merely scientific form, nor can I be satisfied until I have tried to
give expression to the feeling which must be foremost in the minds of
all present. It is impossible to forget that it was by Mr. Mill that
Comte was first made known in this country, and that by him first in
this country the great doctrines of positive thought, the supreme
reign of law in the moral and social world, no less than in the
intellectual world, were reduced to system and life. This conception
as a whole has been gradually forming in the minds of all modern
thinkers; but its full scope and force were presented to Englishmen
for the first time by Mr. Mill. The growth of my own mind, and of that
of all those with whom I have been associated, has been simply the
recognition of this truth in all its bearings and force; and it was
in minds saturated with this principle by the teaching of Mr. Mill
that the great phases of English thought have germinated in our day.