If we now pass from M. Comte's struggle for an honest livelihood, and incidentally for an honorable position among men, to the main work of his life as the founder of a new philosophy, we find him devoting the first ten years to the preparatory work of amassing the materials required in the elaboration of the new system, reducing them to order and tracing out the laws which were to give shape to the rising structure which he had undertaken to build.

During this period he became intimately associated with the celebrated St. Simon. The point of attraction between them was their common conviction of the necessity of a complete social regeneration, based on a wide-spread mental renovation. The different mental tendencies of the two men ultimately produced a divergence between them, followed ere long by a final separation, which was not without some ill-will and recrimination on the part of the senior partner; though M. Comte speaks with considerate kindness of his ancient friend. But he recalls with regret this episode in his mental history, as having led to a waste of philosophical activity in vain attempts at direct political action, and to a premature publication of his plan of social and political regeneration.

We are informed by M. Comte, that, during this preparatory period of his philosophical labors, he "made the fundamental discovery of the laws of sociology in 1822, at the age of twentyfour." Eager to give the world the benefit of his supposed discovery, he immediately put in print a small volume entitled Système de Politique Positive. Only one hundred copies of the work were printed and circulated in 1822. It was reprinted in 1824, and communicated to a great number of European savants and philosophers. Of this little volume it is sufficient to say, at this point, that it assumes to set forth the invariable natural laws which bear sway in vital and social phenomena, and to apply those laws to the questions of society and government.

In the production of this work, the author seems to have definitively put on the harness for the great battle of his life. From this time onward, as long as he lived, he ever regarded himself as called to a great mission, which was to exalt and bless humanity through all time. He studied and lectured,

and published in the full faith that he was the destined man whose mission it was to bring to a peaceful consummation, through the reign of ideas, the political agitations which began with the Lutheran Reformation, and culminated in the bloody drama which was opened in Paris in 1797. And it is not too much to say, that he expected large results, in that direction, from the little work above named.

In noting the lofty aims and extravagant expectations of M. Comte, we should be careful to distinguish his plan of social and political reform from those schemes with which it is liable to be confounded by those who are not familiar with his writings. In distinction from all the forms of communism and socialism which aim to reform society by reconstructing it, the system of positivism aims to reform and reconstruct society and politics by the gradual diffusion of ideas.

M. Comte was disappointed in the reception accorded to his first effort at the solution of the social problem. Like most enthusiasts, he made the mistake of taking his own intensity of conviction as an index of the power of his system to command the public assent. In speaking of the motives which prompted this first publication, he says, "My personal conviction of having sufficiently accomplished the encyclopedic preparation indispensable to my social mission allowed my ardor for renovation to push me immediately to the direct construction of the doctrine destined to terminate the immense western revolution." He goes on to say, that on reviewing the foundation principles of his doctrines, he "felt that the new faith, with all systematic minds, required a scientific foundation equivalent to that which he had painfully acquired," *** and "that the social philosophy could only take its true character and acquire an irresistible authority by resting on the philosophy of nature as a whole." "This conviction," he tells us, "immediately gave rise to a continuous meditation of twenty-four hours, which ended in his conceiving the complete systematization of the Positive Philosophy as an indispensible preamble" to the application of the laws of sociology to the questions of society and government.

Thus the conception of the Positive Philosophy arose out of an exigency created by the failure of the first attempt of the

author to wrestle with the problems of social and political reform. The system was invented, as we may say, as an instrument for the accomplishment of an ulterior purpose, which dawned upon his mind in youth, took definite shape in early manhood, and was the guiding light of all his active efforts in the subsequent years of his life. The aim of M. Comte from the beginning to the end of his career was social and political regeneration.

Working under this impulse, and with the above-named objects in view, the author had so far elaborated his system of philosophy, that he was able to publish the plan of his great treatise in 1826. It took him sixteen years to carry this plan into execution. But he found no occasion to deviate from his original conception; and such as he had traced the plan in 1826, such it stood as finally completed in 1842.

Contemporaneously with the publication of the plan of his great work, M Comte commenced the exposition of the principles of the Positive Philosophy in a course of lectures, which was opened in Paris in April, 1826. This course was interrupted by a serious illness after a few sessions, and was not again resumed till January 4, 1829. M. Comte mentions Humboldt, Blainville, and Painsot as having honored him with their presence at the opening of the course, and adds the names of Fourier, Navier, Broussais, Esquirol, and Binet as in attendance on its resumption in 1829.

In the preface to one of his volumes, the author speaks of the malady which suspended his first course of lectures as a violent cerebral storm. In the personal preface to the last volume of the Positive Philosophy, we learn that this cerebral disturbance culminated in an attack of insanity of considerable severity and persistence. He tells us that the attack was the "result of the fatal concurrence of great mental suffering with violent excess of labor."

M. Comte was for a while placed under the care of the celebrated Dr. Esquirol. After a period of medical treatment he was pronounced incurable. He afterward regarded this decision as very fortunate for him, in that it left the disease free to pass, without the interference of medicine, through a natural crisis to recovery. Thus left to himself and to the affectionate

care of friends, he had so far recovered in August, 1828, that he was able to turn his sad experience to account in a published review of a work by Broussais on "Irritation and Madness." Within five months from the last date he resumed the course of lectures already referred to. From this time the work went on, with some delays, but without serious interruption, to its final completion in 1842.

At the outset M. Comte expected to present the whole subject within the limits of four volumes. The fourth volume was to embrace the science of Sociology, not yet created,—fix its place and assign its rank in the order of recognized sciences. This intended fourth volume grew on his hands to three volumes, much larger than the first three of the series. This was due, in part, to the fact that a new science was to be created and assigned to its appropriate place in the new system of philosophy, and, in part, to the abundance and complexity of the materials which were to be reduced to order. Perhaps it ought, in justice, to be added, that there is some evidence that the great prolixity which characterizes the last volumes of the Positive Philosophy, was also due, in part, to confusion of mind induced by the long-sustained effort of the author, while under the severe pressure of collateral burdens, to complete his great task in the least possible time.

Most of the chapters of the Positive Philosophy had, in substance, been presented in the form of lectures before they were reduced to form for the press. As to the manner in which the work was prepared for the press, the author may be allowed to tell his own story. He says, "As regards the mode of execu tion of the several portions of this treatise, it is sufficient for me to remark that the embarrassments of my personal situation * ***have obliged me to bring to the task the greatest possible celerity ****, without which my philosophical enterprise would have remained essentially impracticable. * * * * Pressed for time, I have never been able to rewrite any part whatever of this long work, which has always been printed from my original draft, the transcription of which would have, at least, doubled the duration of my execution."

M. Comte seems fully to realize the disadvantages of such haste, and laments the necessity which rendered a more deliber

ate procedure impossible. give him the benefit of the above explanation; and it would not be strange if there should be found much occasion, in the perusal of the volumes of the Positive Philosophy, for the exercise of that charity which he seems willing to accept.

The candid critic will cheerfully

By a comparison of dates, it will be perceived that a period of twenty years had elapsed since the appearance of M. Comte's first small publication, entitled Système de Politique Positive, till he was again prepared to resume the subject which was the theme of that early production. The Politique Positive was a direct attempt to apply the laws of sociology, which the author supposed he had discovered, to the questions of social and political reform which were agitating the public mind. Being disappointed in the result of this effort, he gave the labor of nearly a life-time to the work of preparing for another effort in the same direction, which he hoped would prove more successful.

Resuming now his original task, M. Comte, with some interruptions, gave the remainder of his life to the work. The title of the brochure of 1822 was adopted for the work now undertaken-Système de Politique Positive. In the published plan of this work four volumes were promised; but so far as is known to the writer, the fourth volume never appeared.

The troubles of M. Comte with the leaders of thought, with whom he was brought in contact, increased rather than diminished during his second career, as he calls it. But this time he complains principally of the illiberality and intolerance of scientific men. In the later volumes of the Positive Philosphy he had sharply criticized the scientific methods of his time, as lacking in philosophical breadth, and as greatly embarrassing elementary instruction in science by loading it down with cumbrous and useless details. In the personal preface to the last volume he gives an account of what he calls the persecution, which defeated his election, when he was a candidate for the principal chair of mathematics in the Polytechnic School in 1840. In these statements he severely censures certain individuals by name, and with a few exceptions he speaks disparagingly of the scientific class as a whole. After this the reader will not be surprised to learn that M. Comte was displaced from his principal office in connection with the