PART II.

THE LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE.[22]

The appended list of publications contain the materials for knowing and estimating what M. Comte termed his second career, in which the savant, historian, and philosopher of his fundamental treatise, came forth transfigured as the High Priest of the Religion of Humanity.  They include all his writings except the Cours de Philosophic Positive:  for his early productions, and the occasional publications of his later life, are reprinted as Preludes or Appendices to the treatises here enumerated, or in Dr Robinet’s volume, which, as well as that of M. Littre, also contains copious extracts from his correspondence.

In the concluding pages of his great systematic work, M. Comte had announced four other treatises as in contemplation:  on Politics; on the Philosophy of Mathematics; on Education, a project subsequently enlarged to include the systematization of Morals; and on Industry, or the action of man upon external nature.  Our list comprises the only two of these which he lived to execute.  It further contains a brief exposition of his final doctrines, in the form of a Dialogue, or, as he terms it, a Catechism, of which a translation has been published by his principal English adherent, Mr Congreve.  There has also appeared very recently, under the title of “A General View of Positivism,” a translation by Dr Bridges, of the Preliminary Discourse in six chapters, prefixed to the Systeme de Politique Positive.  The remaining three books on our list are the productions of disciples in different degrees.  M. Littre, the only thinker of established reputation who accepts that character, is a disciple only of the Cours de Philosophie Positive, and can see the weak points even in that.  Some of them he has discriminated and discussed with great judgment:  and the merits of his volume, both as a sketch of M. Comte’s life and an appreciation of his doctrines, would well deserve a fuller notice than we are able to give it here.  M. de Blignieres is a far more thorough adherent; so much so, that the reader of his singularly well and attractively written condensation and popularization of his master’s doctrines, does not easily discover in what it falls short of that unqualified acceptance which alone, it would seem, could find favour with M. Comte.  For he ended by casting off M. de Blignieres, as he had previously cast off M. Littre, and every other person who, having gone with him a certain length, refused to follow him to the end.  The author of the last work in our enumeration, Dr Robinet, is a disciple after M. Comte’s own heart; one whom no difficulty stops, and no absurdity startles.  But it is far from our disposition to speak otherwise than respectfully of Dr Robinet and the other earnest men, who maintain round the tomb of their master an organized co-operation for the diffusion of doctrines which they believe destined to regenerate the human race.  Their enthusiastic veneration for him, and devotion to the ends he pursued, do honour alike to them and to their teacher, and are an evidence of the personal ascendancy he exercised over those who approached him; an ascendancy which for a time carried away even M. Littre, as he confesses, to a length which his calmer judgment does not now approve.