“Her powerful intellect had accepted the teaching of Auguste Comte, and she looked forward to the reorganization of belief on the lines which he had laid down.  Her study of his two great works was diligent and constant.  The last time I saw her—­a few days before her death—­I found that she had just been reading over again, with closest attention, that wonderful treatise, The General View of Positivism, a book which always seems full of fresh wisdom, however often one comes back to it.  She had her reservations, no doubt.  There were details in Comte’s work which did not satisfy her.  But all who knew her were aware—­and I speak from an acquaintance of eighteen years—­that she had not only cast away every shred of theology and metaphysics, but that she had found refuge from mere negativism in the system of Comte.  She did not write her positivism in broad characters on her books.  Like Shakspere, she was first an artist and then a philosopher; and I imagine she thought it to be her business as an artist rather to paint humanity as it is than as she would have it to be.  But she could not conceal her intellectual conviction, and few competent persons read her books without detecting her standpoint.  If any doubt could have existed, it was set at rest by that noble poem on ‘Subjective Immortality,’ the clearest, and at the same time the most beautiful, expression that has yet been given to one of the most distinctive doctrines of positivism; a composition of which we can already say with certainty that it will enter into the positivist liturgies of all countries and through all time.  Towards positivism as an organization, a discipline,—­in short, as a church,—­her attitude must be plainly stated.  She had much sympathy with it, as she showed by regularly subscribing to positivist objects, as, for instance, to the fund of the central organization in Paris presided over by M. Laffitte.  But she sought membership neither in that nor any other church.  Like most of the stronger and thoroughly emancipated minds in this period of transition and revolutionary disturbance, she looked not beyond her own conscience for guidance and authority, but judged for herself, appealing to no external tribunal from the solitary judgment-seat within.  I do not for a moment suppose that she looked on the organization of a church as unattainable; but she did not regard it as attained.”

Another of her friends [Footnote:  W.M.W.  Call in the Westminster Review for July, 1881.] has indicated very clearly the nature and extent of her dissent from Comte.  He remarks that “her apologetic representation of the Politique as an Utopia evinces that she did not admit the cogency of its reasoning, or regard the entire social reconstruction of Comte as demonstrably valid.  Her dissatisfaction with some of his speculations, as expressed to ourselves in the spring of 1880, was very decided....  All membership with the positivist community she steadily rejected.  That a philosophy