"If you would know a person's limitations," he says, "induce him to write on some large subject like the History of Civilization, or the History of the Origin and Growth of the Moral Sentiment. You will find his particular hobby writ large."
He takes up a History of the Semites. "What a pertinacious fellow he is," alluding not to any ancient Semite but to the Author, "how closely he sticks to his point! He has discovered a new fact about the Amalekites,--I wonder what he will do with it. Just as I expected! there he is back with it to that controversy he is having with his Presbytery. I notice that he calls the children of Israel the Beni-Israel. He knows that that sort of thing irritates the conservative party. It suggests that he is following Renan, and yet it may only prove that he thinks in Hebrew."
The Gentle Reader regards ambitious works on the Philosophy of History with mingled suspicion and curiosity. So much depends, in such cases, upon the philosopher. In spite of many misadventures, curiosity generally gets the better of caution.
He opens Comte's "Positive Philosophy" and reads, "In order to understand the true value and character of the 'Positive Philosophy' we must take a brief, general view of the progressive course of the human mind regarded as a whole." Then he is conducted through the three stages of the theological or fictitious, the metaphysical or abstract, and the scientific or positive; which last circle proves large enough only for Comte's own opinions. He is caught in a trap and goes round and round without finding the hole through which he came in.
"When a learned person asks one," says the Gentle Reader, "to accompany him on a brief general survey of the progressive course of the human mind, regarded as a whole, I am apt to be wary. I want to know what he is up to. I fear the philosopher bearing historical gifts."
Yet where the trap is made of slighter fabric, and he feels that he can break through at will, he enjoys watching the author and his work. How marvelous are the powers of the human mind! How the facts of experience can be bent to a sternly logical formula! And how the whole trend of things seems to yield to an imperious will that is stronger than fate!