GEORGE BELL & SONS LONDON: YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN AND NEW YORK, 66, FIFTH AVENUE CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO. THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE FREELY TRANSLATED AND CONDENSED BY HARRIET MARTINEAU WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1896 208111 INTRODUCTION. "If it cannot be said of Comte that he has created a science, it may be said truly that he has, for the first time, made the creation possible. This is a great achievement, and, with the extraordinary merit of his historical analysis, and of his philosophy of the physical sciences, is enough to immortalize his name."-JOHN STUART MILL. "Comte is now generally admitted to have been the most eminent and important of that interesting group of thinkers whom the overthrow of old institutions in France turned towards social speculations."-JOHN MORLEY. THE HE foregoing quotations from the two English authorities who have most severely criticized the "Positive Polity" of Auguste Comte, bear witness to the profound impulse given to modern thought by the publication of the "Positive Philosophy," more than half a century ago. Miss Martineau's condensation appeared eleven years later, during the lifetime of Comte and before the completion of his later works. It was warmly welcomed by the philosopher himself, and adopted by him as the popular form of his own voluminous treatise. Since that time an immense amount of discussion has arisen about the philosophy itself, about the subsequent development of Comte's own career and speculations, and on the incidents of his strenuous life. In placing before the public Miss Martineau's version of the "Philosophie Positive" in a new form, it seems a fitting occasion to introduce it by some notice of Comte's own life and labours, 148310 as well as by some account of that which he called his "fundamental work," and of the very remarkable version by which Harriet Martineau gave it a new literary form. Auguste Comte was born at Montpellier, in the south of France, 19th Jan., 1798, the eldest son of Louis Comte, treasurer of taxes for the department of Hérault, and of Rosalie Boyer, whose family produced some eminent physicians. Both father and mother were sincere Catholics and ardent royalists. Their son was christened Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier. The house in which he was born is still to be seen opposite the church of Sainte Eulalie. At the age of nine, a small and delicate child, he was placed as a boarder in the Lycée of his native city. He soon showed extraordinary intelligence and industry, a character of singular courage and resolution, and a spirit of defiance towards religious and civil authority. He refused to conform to any worship, and avowed an open hatred of Napoleon and his schemes of conquest. Anecdotes are still told of his prodigious memory; he could repeat a hundred verses after a single recital, and could recite backwards the words of a page that he had once read. He carried off all prizes, and at the age of fourteen and a half he had passed through the entire course of the Lycée. He then studied mathematics under Daniel Encontre, a teacher of great ability, whose place he was able to take in his fifteenth year. At the age of sixteen he passed in the École Polytechnique, the first on the list of candidates for the south and centre of France. In October, 1814, the young Comte, then in his seventeenth year, entered the great college at Paris, and there applied himself with his usual energy to mathematics and physics under the illustrious Poinsot. He was called "the philosopher," and took the lead amongst his fellow pupils by his energy as well as his abilities. He was known as an ardent republican, a fierce opponent of tyranny, whether |