There is the question that we want the positive school to answer.

It is surely evident that, in this perplexity, it is beside the point to tell us that the birds must not peck each other's eyes out, and that they must all have access to the trough that we are ignorant how to fill.
The fault then, so continually committed by the positive school, is this.

They confuse the negative conditions of happiness with the positive materials of it.

Professor Huxley, in a passage I have already quoted, is caught, so to speak, in the very act of committing it.
'_Theft, murder, and adultery_,' all these three, it will be remembered, he classes together, and seems to think that they stand upon the same footing.

But from what has just been pointed out, it is plain that they do not do so.