32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



But I do not write this letter merely for the purpose of pointing 

 out these facts. I wi'ite it mainly for the purpose of making public 

 the judgment given on the question at issue by the earliest and most 

 distinguished of M. Comte's English adherents, Mr. John Stuart Mill. 

 Before quoting his judgment I must explain how it came to be given, 

 and in doing this must reproduce a letter written by me to him many 

 years ago, which itself contains evidence clearly disproving Mr. Har- 

 rison's assertion. Here it is, or rather the first part of it : 



" n WiLMOT Street, Derby, July 29, 1858. 



"My deae Sir: May I ask your opinion on a point partly of personal inter- 

 est, partly of more general interest ? 



" In the essays on ' Progress ; its Law and Cause,' and on ' Transcendental 

 Physiology,' which I believe you have read, are the rudiments of certain general 

 principles, which, at the time they were first enunciated, I had no intention of 

 developing further. But more recently these general principles, uniting with 

 certain others, whose connection with them I did not before recognize, have 

 evolved into a form far higher than I had ever anticipated ; and I now find that 

 the various special ideas which I had designed hereafter to publish on certain 

 divisions of Biology, Psychology, and Sociology, have fallen into their places as 

 parts of the general body of doctrine thus originating. Having intended to con- 

 tinue occupying myself, as hitherto, in writing essays and books embodying 

 these various special ideas, I have become still more anxious to devote my ener- 

 gies to the exposition of these larger views, which include them, and, as I think, 

 reduce all the higher sciences to a rational form." 



Has Mr. Harrison any doubt concerning the truth of these state- 

 ments? If so, he may easily verify them. If he will turn to the 

 second, or constructive, division of " First Principles " (I give the 

 references to the second and subsequent editions, partly because they 

 are most widely distributed), he will find that Chapter XV embodies 

 the argument contained in the first half of the essay on " Progress : 

 its Law and Cause," and incorporates all the illustrative examples 

 along with additional ones ; and in Chapter XX he will find the sec- 

 ond half of that essay reproduced with all its illustrations, and with 

 further elaborations. Similarly, two fundamental principles set forth 

 in the essay originally published under the title " The Ultimate Laws 

 of Physiology " (but republished in the third volume of my Essays, 

 etc., under the title " Transcendental Physiology "), he will find are 

 severally developed in Chapters XIV and XIX ; where, again, the 

 original illustrations will be found joined with numerous others, ac- 

 companying a much wider extension of those principles. In these 

 two essays, then, Mr, Harrison will discover the id'ees-meres of the 

 Synthetic Philosophy ; and the task before him is to afiiliate these 

 ideas, if he can, upon the ideas contained in the Positive Philosophy. 



I now come to the opinion expressed by Mr. Mill. When, in 1864, 

 there appeared in the Revue des Deux 3Iondes an article on " First 

 Principles," by M. Auguste Laugel, in which he described me as being 



