Now what on positive principles is the groundwork of this teaching?
All ethical epithets such as sacred, heroic, and so forth--all the words, in fact, that are by implication applied to Nature--have absolutely no meaning save as applied to conscious beings; and as a subject for positive observation, there exists no consciousness in the universe outside this earth.

By what conceivable means, then, can the positivists transfer to Nature in general qualities which, so far as they know, are peculiar to human nature only?
They can only do this in one of two ways--both of which they would equally repudiate--either by an act of fancy, or by an act of faith.

Tested rigidly by their own fundamental common principles, it is as unmeaning to call the universe sacred as to say that the moon talks French.
Let us however pass this by; let us refuse to subject their teaching to the extreme rigour of even their own law; and let us grant that by some mixed use of fancy or of mysticism, they can turn to Nature as to some vast moral hieroglyph.

What sort of morality do they find in it?
Nature, as positive observation reveals her to us, is a thing that can have no claim either on our reverence or our approbation.

Once apply any moral test to her conduct, and as J.S.Mill has so forcibly pointed out, she becomes a monster.