Comte 8 Positive Philosophy. 141 



sympathy, even while we are unable to repress 

 our contempt. We have no criticism to make on 

 Mr. Mill s treatment of the subject, which is in 

 the main sober and just. But we are surprised 

 at the remark with which he concludes the book, 

 that M. Comte should be considered as great a 

 thinker as either Descartes or Leibnitz, and hardly 

 more extravagant than they. M. Comte s achieve 

 ments have indeed been great. But neither in 

 _,ne amount of mental effort implied by them, nor 

 in the magnificence of their consequences, can 

 they ever be compared to Descartes s application 

 of algebra to geometry, or to Leibnitz s discovery 

 of the differential calculus. Our surprise is all 

 the greater since, in his recent work on Sir Wil 

 liam Hamilton, Mr. Mill has shown himself quite 

 capable both of appreciating the transcendent 

 merits of Descartes, and of sympathizing with 

 the state of mind which led to the eccentricities 

 of Leibnitz. M. Comte might in some respects 

 be more justly compared to Bacon ; and the rejec 

 tion of the Copernican system, which has so often 

 been alleged as a proof of the narrowness of the 

 latter, seems after all a trifling blemish, when we 

 remember how persistently M. Comte ignores all 

 that has been achieved in the department of Psy 

 chology. The above is one of the rare cases in 



