over-elaborated sentences never leave the student in doubt for a moment as to his meaning, as to his whole meaning, as to all that he wishes to express, and all that he means to disclaim or exclude. The result is, that the general reader can hardly follow these crowded and closely welded paragraphs without the assistance of an expert, whilst the serious student of the Positive Philosophy finds some new light or some needful warning in everyone of these pregnant epithets and precise limitations. Comte saw this clearly himself; and hence, in his "Popular Library," embodied in his later works, he inserts-not his own "Positive Philosophy" in six volumes-but Miss Martineau's condensed English version. Unfortunately not only the general reader, but the professed critics of Positivism have too often adopted his generous suggestion.

"The Philosophie Positive" as a whole received an earlier and more open welcome in England than in France. Sir David Brewster, the eminent physicist, a strong opponent of Positivism as a religious and social philosophy, reviewed the first two volumes in the "Edinburgh Review," (No. 136, 1838, vol. lxvii., p. 271). In this essay, which is far from being the work of a partisan or even a friend, Brewster pays homage to the depth and sagacity of Comte's mind, and he accepts in principle the law of the Three States, the Classification of the Sciences, and the ultimate extension of the methods of Science to Sociology. Mr. Mill followed in his "System of Logic," 1843, in which he spoke of Auguste Comte as amongst the first of European thinkers, and by his institution of a new social science, as in some respects, the first. In 1845-6, George Henry Lewes published his "Biographical History of Philosophy," enlarged in 1857, 1867, 1870, and 1880, in which he treated of Auguste Comte as the greatest of modern thinkers," and as crowning the general history

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of philosophical evolution. In 1853, Lewes published Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences," a volume in Bohn's Philosophical Library. And in the same year Miss Martineau published the condensed translation which at once made Comte familiar to all English students. This has been translated into French by M. Avezac-Lavigne, and has passed through more than one edition. It is a singular fact in literary history, and a striking testimony to the merit of Miss Martineau, that the work of a French philosopher should be studied in France in a French retranslation from his English translator-and that at his own formal desire and by his own special followers.

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An interesting account of Miss Martineau's own labours on the translation may be found in her " Autobiography and Letters" (2nd edition, 1877, vol. ii., p. 385, etc., etc.). The work appeared finally, after some interruptions, in the beginning of November, 1853, and it was received with a chorus of approval by the French philosopher and by his English readers. Comte's own opinion is set forth in the letters of his printed by M. Littré in his biographical work, to which we shall presently return. George Grote, the historian, wrote to Miss Martineau: "Not only is it extremely well done, but it could not be better done." The French translation of Miss Martineau's condensation by M. Avezac-Lavigne, a Bordeaux disciple of Comte, appeared in May, 1871. The correspondence between him and Miss. Martineau is set out in the "Autobiography" (vol.' iii., p. 310).

The outspoken language of the "personal preface" to the sixth volume of the "Philosophie " brought down upon Comte even severer sufferings than either he or his friends had anticipated. He was deprived first of one, then of both his official posts, was treated as an outcast from the academic world, and was reduced to absolute penury. But in August, 1842, just before the actual publication of the

sixth volume, his wife carried out the intention which she had long meditated and announced, and insisted on a separation. The story of Comte's married life is full of interest and of tragedy, but it is too intricate, and still too much disputed, to be here fully told. The case of Madame Comte has been presented by M. Littré in the work cited above, and the case of Auguste Comte has been recently set forth by M. Lonchampt, one of his executors, in the "Revue Occidentale" (vol. xxii., p. 271; and vol. xxiii., pp. 1, 135). As a young man of twenty-three, Comte casually fell in with a certain Caroline Massin, a young Parisian, of a degraded past life, of singular intelligence, with great ambition, and many fascinating gifts. He felt for her affection and pity, took her under his protection, and ultimately married her. In spite of real affection on his side, real admiration on hers, long-suffering selfcontrol on his part, and some fitful acts of self-devotion on her part, their union became unhappy, and at last intolerable. She never learned either to love her husband or to respect her own position as a wife. His entire absorption in his work, and his defiance of the academic and literary world, and all that it had to offer, alienated her selfish nature; she left him more than once, and, on the completion of the polemical preface to vol. vi., she left him for ever, after seventeen years of married life. They continued to correspond for some years; but separation ultimately passed into mutual estrangement and bitter feeling. In his last will he spoke of her with poignant reproaches, the ground of which has now been divulged, and he described his marriage as the one great error of his life.

It is not proposed in this brief introduction to Miss Martineau's work to enlarge on the subsequent life and the later works of Auguste Comte. By the intervention of Mr. Mill, three Englishmen, Mr. Grote, Mr. Raikes Currie, and Sir W. Molesworth, provided, in 1844, the salary of

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£200 of which he was deprived; but to the surprise, and even the indignation, of Comte, they declined to make this permanent. Mr. Grote and other friends made some further contributions; and ultimately, by the help of M. Littré, Dr. Charles Robin, Dr. Segond, and others, a regular subsidy was established in 1849. It began with 3,000 francs (£120), ultimately rose to 8,000 francs (£320), and it has been continued until the present time, in order to carry out the purposes of the last will. On this pittance Comte lived until his death, absorbed in his philosophic work, and continuing the allowance to his wife. adopted an almost ascetic life, avoiding the use of alcohol, coffee, tobacco, and all stimulants, limiting his food by weight to the minimum of two meals per diem, one of these being of bread and milk only. During a few years his income had been £400, but for the greater part of his life it had fallen much below this amount. There can be no question that his whole career was one of the most intense concentration of mind, gigantic industry, rigid economy, and singular punctuality and exactness in all his habits. Though far from conforming to any saintly ideal, it was a life of devotion to philosophy, as all his biographers agree to describe it. John Morley truly says, "Neither Franklin nor any man that ever lived, could surpass him in the heroic tenacity with which, in the face of a thousand obstacles, he pursued his own ideal of a vocation."

In 1844, two years after the desertion of his wife, Comte saw Madame Clotilde de Vaux, the sister of one of his disciples, the wife of a man of good family, condemned for life to penal servitude. In the course of the next year, he fell in love with her, entered into the closest intimacy with her, which she succeeded in maintaining quite irreproachable, whilst he insisted on claiming her as his spiritual wife. After one year of devoted friendship, she died in his arms, leaving him inconsolable in what he called his veuvage

éternel. From this point began the second period of his life, and of his philosophic career. He gave public lectures again in 1848-1850, until the hall was closed by the Empire, and he published his second great work, the "Positive Polity," in four vols., 1851-1854. The "Catechism" was published in 1852, the "Appeal to Conservatives" in 1855, and the "Subjective Synthesis" in 1856. In the year following his health, perhaps affected by his rigid austerity of life, began to give way, and he died of cancer on September 5th, 1857. He was buried in Père la Chaise; the day of his death has since been commemorated yearly by his followers, who now for thirty-eight years have maintained his rooms, books, and effects intact, and have carried out the directions of his last will.

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This is not the place to enter on the complex question whether the subsequent works of Comte were a normal and legitimate development of his fundamental "Philosophy." G. H. Lewes and John Morley have amply shown that it was, though both of them refuse their assent to the teaching of the "Polity." But, as Mr. Morley says, for the purposes of Comte's career the two ought to be regarded as an integral whole." And he also remarks, 'A great analysis was to precede a great synthesis, but it was the synthesis on which Comte's vision was centred from the first." This is now so clear from the mass of correspondence and biography which recent years have produced, that it would no doubt modify the contrary opinion expressed by Mr. Mill, thirty years ago. When Miss Martineau translated the "Philosophy," more than forty years ago, the later works of Comte were not before her; and, as she frankly states in her preface, the later works of Comte are not referred to in her book at all. She carried this decision to the very extreme point of suppressing, without any mention, the last ten pages of the sixth and concluding volume of the "Philosophy." Now, from the