First American edition, first published Glasgow in the same year, originally appearing as a series of articles in the Contemporary Review. Caird is critical of the Positivist religion, calling it ‘artificial’ and focusing on its current schisms. Comte himself gets off lightly, with Caird willing to admit that controversy is a kind of homage, and seeing Comte as a Kantian figure attempting to straddle the old world and the new; and being broken apart in the attempt.