ABSTRACT
RETIREMENT from office was not followed by leisure. Bridges was at once appointed a member of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, on which his long administrative experience made him invaluable. In 1893 the project of a monthly journal so often mooted, materialized, with Beesly as its first editor. The Positivist Review dealt with current topics in a spirit of detachment from any political party. All alike encountered criticism; praise at times, more often blame. The influence exercised by the Review was wider than its circulation. It never made a popular appeal, but it was read by politicians, students and thinkers. Whether or not the reader might agree with the opinions expressed therein, they never failed to stimulate thought, and to illuminate the subject discussed. Throughout its career the Review upheld the fundamental principle that politics, national, international, and social must be subordinated to morals, and from that aspect it dealt with them faithfully. 31 For the Reveiw, Bridges wrote no less than a hundred essays, the greater number dealing with the fundamental principles of Positivism in religion, science, philosophy and politics, and these papers were collected and published after his death by Beesly in Illustrations of Positivism. It is claimed, and rightly claimed, for this book that it is the best exposition of Positivism which exists in English, but it may be read for other reasons. The essays cover wide fields of thought; they are all inspired by Bridges’ lofty view of life, and contain passages of great beauty, as well as incisive aphorisms, which may be quoted almost at random from its pages. “ Cant is a weed that runs riot everywhere, and not least on English soil. The insincere use of smooth words, especially where the insincerity is unconscious, is a corrupt and emasculating influence, incompatible with common honesty, and therefore fatal to any standard of life that deserves the name of religion.”
