75 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mill's sympathy for Comte's misfortunes in any way abated ; but the 

 chance of their ever pulling together on social questions was reduced 

 to a very small amount. They still agreed as to the separation of the 

 spiritual and the temporal power, but only as a vague generality. In 

 July, 1844, came the crash at the Polytechnic ; by a dexterous ma- 

 noeuvre, Comte was ousted without being formally dismissed ; he lost 

 six thousand francs a year, and was in dire distress. He appealed to 

 Mill, but with the same reservation as before ; Mill exerted himself 

 with Grote and Molesworth, who with Raikes Currie agreed to make 

 up the deficiency for the year. Another election came round, and he 

 was not reinstated, and was again dependent on the assistance of his 

 English friends. They made up a portion of his second year's defi- 

 ciency, but declined to continue the grant. He is vexed and chagrined 

 beyond measure, and administers to Mill a long lecture upon the rela- 

 tions of rich men to philosophers ; but his complaint is most dignified 

 in its tone. This puts Mill into a very trying position ; he has to 

 justify the conduct of Grote and Molesworth, who might with so little 

 inconvenience to themselves have tided him over another year. The 

 delicate part of the situation was that Grote, who began admiring 

 Comte, as Mill did, although never to the same degree, was yet strongly 

 adverse to his sociological theories, especially as regarded their ten- 

 dency to introduce a new despotism over the individual. Indeed, his 

 admiration of Comte scarcely extended at all to the sociological vol- 

 umes. He saw in them frequent mistakes and perversions of histori- 

 cal facts, and did not put the same stress as Mill did upon the social 

 analysis the distinction of statics and dynamics, and historical 

 method ; in fact, he had considerable misgivings throughout as to all 

 the grand theories of the French school in the philosophy of history. 

 But the repression of liberty by a new machinery touched his acutest 

 susceptibility ; he often recurred in conversation to this part of Comte's 

 system, and would not take any comfort from the suggestion I often 

 made to him that there was little danger of any such system ever be- 

 ing in force. It was the explanation of this divergence that Mill had 

 to convey to Comte ; who, on the other hand, attempted in vain to 

 reargue the point by calling to mind how much he and Mill were 

 agreed upon, which, however, did not meet Grote's case. He returned 

 to the theme in successive letters, and urged upon Mill that there was 

 an exaggeration of secondary differences, and so on. What may be 

 said in his favor is that Grote turned round upon him rather too soon. 

 This was in 1846. The same year his Clotilde died. He still un- 

 folded his griefs to Mill, and, as may be supposed, received a tender 

 and sympathizing response. The correspondence here ends.* 



* Although Mill was the first and principal medium of making Comte and his doc- 

 trines familiar to the public, he was soon followed by George Henry Lewes, who was 

 beginning his literary career, as a writer in reviews, about the year 1841. I met Lewes 

 frequently when I was first in London in 1842. He sat at the feet of Mill, read the 



