442. THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



In a previous chapter we have described the most important repre- 

 sentatives of biology in France during that period; physics, chemistry, and 

 astronomy at the same time could boast of no less brilliant representatives. 

 And the results that these sciences achieved were very clearly brought home 

 to the world in general, owing to their splendid application to practical 

 life, which was then just beginning and which afterwards represented per- 

 haps the most striking characteristic feature of the century; it was then that 

 the influence of steam-power on industry and communications first began 

 to be realized; it was then that the significance of chemistry in numberless 

 fields of activity began to make itself felt in the daily life of humanity, 

 not to speak of the somewhat later application of electrical phenomena in 

 practical everyday life. As a result of all this the natural sciences began to 

 influence the public mind more than they had ever done before; mankind ex- 

 pected them to lead to new and happier times, while theology and philoso- 

 phy, which had served the oppressors of the people, reaped nothing but 

 hatred and contempt. Would it not be possible for all forms of human life, 

 for the whole of human culture,, to be placed under the a^gis of the natural 

 sciences, to be explained through them and developed in their spirit? This 

 question was answered by many with an unreserved yes; foremost of these 

 was Comte, one of the most gifted thinkers that France has ever produced 

 and certainly the most influential during the past century. 



Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte was born in 1798 at 

 Montpellier. He belonged to an ultra-Catholic and strongly conservative 

 family and received a strict upbringing in the same spirit. Even when he was 

 fourteen years old, however, he began to doubt the correctness of the dog- 

 mas on which he had been brought up, and when, later on, he went to study 

 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, his oppositional attitude became clearly 

 defined and was all the more strengthened when the Government disestab- 

 lished that institution, which was feared as a centre of opposition, before 

 he had had time to complete his studies there. Thus he passed no examina- 

 tion, a fact that had a disastrous efi^ect upon his future; nevertheless, in spite 

 of his parents' opposition, he continued his studies in Paris, steadily im- 

 proving the substantial knowledge he had already acquired of mathematics, 

 physics, and chemistry. He soon won a reputation for his genius and eru- 

 dition — among his patrons and friends he counted men such as Humboldt 

 and Blainville — yet he was never able to obtain a post in the Government 

 service, but all his life he had to earn his living by private tutoring, except 

 for some years when he was employed as an assistant teacher. This may to a 

 certain extent be explained as due to the peculiar theoretical point of view 

 he adopted; even in his youth he resolved to devote his life to creating a 

 general system, which was to deal, along natural-scientific lines, with the 

 whole of existence, both of nature and of human life, and thus to arrive at 



