468 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



world he is to be displaced by a mere blank which Comte differs 

 from Mr. Spencer simply by not mentioning. However, as far as he 

 goes, he was undoubtedly synthetic as well as analytic from the 

 first. 



The form of his synthesis was to a great extent suggested by the 

 character of the past revolutionary' period, and the limitations by 

 the circumstances of his life. To a large extent self-taught, he was 

 opinionated before he had a chance of understanding the more 

 subtle movements of the mind. Surrounded by retrograde Roman 

 Catholicism, he never had more than the merest hearsay knowledge 

 of Protestantism ; immersed in his own recollections of the writings of 

 the Encyclopaedists, he had no real acquaintance with the thought of 

 Kant and his followers. The doctrine of immanence never even 

 suggested itself to him, and he retained throughout life the con- 

 viction that Aristotle's substance was the type of all conceptions of 

 ontological unity, and that the rmly possible conce])tion of God was 

 one which represented the world as his instrument rather than his 

 form. Had Comte proceeded to a university he might have had 

 time to understand the nature of the questions discusstd by meta- 

 physics, and have learned that they are questions that must l)e faced 

 before the scientific mind can rest satisfied, and are not merely 

 imagined by metaphysicians. He might then have avoided making 

 himself ridiculous by treating all metaphysicians with indiscriminate 

 and unintelligent abuse, and he might have anticipated his critics by 

 discovering that a subjective synthesis which is not also objective 

 deserves at best the epithet " provisional " which he applies to 

 theolog)-. 



Comte is himself an object-lesson of the truth of his d(jcrrine 

 that science needs a philosophical synthesis, since it will be possible 

 for us tO' show how his own scientific work in .sociology is spoiled by 

 the imperfections of his philosophy. But he did much at any rate 

 to prove the claims of sociology to rank, at least potentially, as a 

 science. He considered sociology the propjer instmment to effect 

 the reconciliation of order and progress. (Phil. IV., 234.) In his 

 first essay he ridicules the popular prejudice that it is possible to 

 form just opinions with regard to politics without definite study, and 

 approves of Condorcet's statement that we might as well express 

 opinions about astronomy without special knowledge. (Separation 

 generale entre les opinions et les desirs, pp. 1-3.) He claims that 

 morals should l)e founded on reason, and sociology on history, and 

 he deplores the anti-historic spirit of modern times which amounts to 

 an insurrection of the living against the dead. In the programme 

 of his lectures of ] 826-7 we see that he already regarded sociology, 

 or social physics, as the crown of the sciences. In fact the outline 

 ■of his system had even, then stamped itself on his mind. 



Comte's mind was from the first clear, incisive, and intrepid. 

 He was dismissed from the Ecole Polytechnique for leading an 

 attempt of the boys tO' expel one of the masters, whose conduct thev 

 considered unworthy ; and he was imprisoned for refusing to enlist 

 tinder the Government of 1830. (Lewes II., 558, 572.) This is 



