COilTE, AUGUSTE. 



CONCA, SEBASTIANO CAVALIERE. 



313 



of views has been put forth by himself, and is now generally referred 

 to under tho name of "The Positive Philosophy," was born withiu a 

 year or two of the close of the last ceutury. His family was strongly 

 Catholic aud royalist. Educated at one of the French lyceums, he 

 gave very early proofs not only of a speculative turn of mind, but also 

 of a dissatisfaction with the existing methods of knowledge and the 

 existing forms of society, and a belief that he was destined to play the 

 part of a Bacon in the 19th century, and initiate a new philosophical 

 revolution. Mathematics and the physical sciences occupied much of 

 his attention, but he had already extended his viewa to social question", 

 and become possessed with the doctrine that the time had come when 

 all science and all philosophy must be treated from the social, as the 

 supreme point of view. It was with views and aims of this kind 

 fermenting in his mind that, while yet a mere youth, he was involved 

 within the powerful vortex of the Saiut-Simonian school, which, 

 immediately after the restoration of 1815, began to figure in Paris. 

 The genius of Saint Simon, then between his fiftieth and sixtieth year, 

 drew around him, a< by a kind of magnetic fascination, a number of 

 ardent young men, whom he indoctrinated with his views, and almost 

 all of whom notwithstanding that few of them in mature years have 

 adhered to the philosophy of their master have been distinguished 

 in one way or another iu tlie subsequent history of France. Uf these 

 Cotnte was the youngest the Benjamin, as he was called, of the 

 Saiut-Simonian school. Saint Simon had high liop-s of him; and 

 when, about 1820, the school put forth, as one of their propagandist 

 works, an exposition of the scientific basis of their system, it was on 

 Comte that tho preparation of the work was devolved. The work 

 entitled ' Systeme de Politique Positive' however only partially satis- 

 fied Saint-Simon, who said that while ''it expounded the generalities 

 of his system from the Aristotelian point of view," it overlooker! 

 "their religious and sentimental aspect." The truth i*, Saint-Simon 

 and Comte were beginning to part company. The discrepancy did not 

 become decided till after the death of Saint-Simon in 1825, when 

 Comte broke off from the little band of Saint Simouians including 

 Enfantin, Bazard, Rodriguez, and Augustin Thierry who remained 

 faithful to the views of their master, and set about forming an orga- 

 nisation for their farther propagation. Comte has subsequently spoken 

 disparagingly of Saint-Simon, and represented his temporary connection 

 with that enthusiast as rather an interruption to his own trne intel- 

 lectual development than a furtherance of it ; but certainly there are 

 such coincidence-* between M. Comte's subsequent works and the 

 cardinal speculations promulgated by Saint-Simon when alive, that, 

 unless we can suppose that the pupil prompted the master to a greater 

 extent than usually happens in such cases, it is impossible to acquit 

 M. Comte of a certain appearance of ingratitude in his allusions to this 

 part of his education. In 1826, M. Comte was seized with what he 

 calls " a cerebral crisis," which for the time was believed to be irre- 

 coverable insanity. He did recover however, and lived to propound 

 the philosophy with which his name is associated. Supporting himself 

 by teaching mathematics in which capacity he was professor at the 

 J&cole Polytechnique, till differeac<-s with his colleagues and the 

 accession of Louis Napoleon to the empire, deprived him of his office, 

 and reduced him to a state of indigence in which his chief support has 

 been voluntary contributions from his admirers in France and England 

 be has within the 1 ist six and twenty years published a series of 

 works, all davoted to the elucidation of bis " Positive Philosophy," 

 and in which even those who have no sympathy with that system in 

 its fundamental doctrines and its spirit, or even abhor it, recognise 

 great power of intellect, and an extraordinary fertility of generalisation 

 on all subjects. 



First, published at intervals in six large volumes, between 1830 and 

 1842. came his greatest work, entitled ' Cours de Philosophic Positive.' 

 In this work, after propounding hn main doctrine, which is, that the 

 human mind has, by a natural law, passed through three successive 

 stages in its thoughts upon all subjects; namely, the theological stage, 

 in which phenomena are accounted for by the supposition of the 

 agency of supernatural beings to produce them; the metaphysical 

 stage, in which, while living supernatural beings are got rid of, certain 

 abstract ideas, such as those involved in the words " Nature," 

 " Harmony,'' and the like, take their place in men's thoughts as the 

 productive causes of everything ; and the positive stage, in which, 

 shaking off both unseen spiritual agencies and abstractions, the mind 

 grasps the notion of the universe in all its departments as proceeding 

 according to certain laws or uniform sequences, to be ascertained by 

 observation and induction ; he proceeds to apply this view to the entire 

 system of human knowledge. All that man knows, or can know, he 

 says, consists of certain sciences which may be arranged in a hierarchical 

 order as follows, according to the increasing speciality and complexity 

 of the facta with which they res|>ectively deal : 1st. Mathematics, the 

 most cener.il and simple of all, which deals with the mere facts of 

 number and magnitude ; 2nd. Attronomy, which pre supposes mathe- 

 matics, but takes in as additional the facts of the celestial sphere, i. e. 

 suns, planets, moons, comets, &c., as they are seen as mutually acting 

 muses ; 3rd. General Phyrict, which takes for granted mathematical 

 and astronomical laws, but concerns itself also with the motions and 

 other mechanical phenomena of bodies on our earth ; 4th. Chemistry, 

 which, in like manner, pre-snpposes all the foregoing, but investigates 

 farther the phenomena of the molecular change? and constitution of 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. II. 



bodies; 5th. Biology (subdivided into Vegetable aud Animal, and 

 involving Psychology as a department of Animal Biology concerned 

 more immediately with the phenomena of nerve and brain-function), 

 undertaking the farther study of individual organised beings; and 

 6thly. Sociology or the Social Science, investigating, as the most 

 complex phenomena of all, those of social or corporate life. Hitherto, 

 according to M. Comte, only the first four of these sciences have been 

 even partially emancipated from the theological and metaphysical 

 spirit, and pursued positively ; but the time has come, he thinks, for 

 the extension of the true positive or scientific spirit to all, and con- 

 sequently for the expulsion of theology and metaphysics from the 

 universe. As the apostle of this great speculative change he first 

 reviews the various sciences up to the last and chief one which, by a 

 gross but convenient grammatical hybridism, he calls Sociology, giving 

 in fact a series of treatises in which the generalities of mathematics, 

 astronomy, general physics, chemistry, and biology, are lucidly ex- 

 pounded, and then reserves his strength, in the last three volumes, for 

 Sociology. Here he reviews the history of the world, aud protesting 

 against the anarchy of all existing politics, attempts to lay down the 

 basis of a true or positive politics, such as states will ultimately be 

 governed by, when the positive millennium shall have come. Apart 

 from the main purpose, this portion of the work abounds with striking 

 thoughts and propositions of wide application. 



In 1843 M. Comte published a small mathematical work entitled 

 'Traite file'mentaire de Ge'ome'trie Analytique b, deux et a trois 

 dimensions,' followed not long afterwards by a popular treatise on 

 astronomy, which has been highly admired; and iu 1844 he published 

 a ' Discours sur 1'Esprit positif,' enforcing popularly the ideas of his 

 larger work. Within the next few years, however, a second vital 

 ' crisis ' of his life not this time of the ' cerebral' kind, but of the 

 sentimental worked a certain change in his views. A virtuous 

 affection, to which he makes frequent allusion in subsequent auto- 

 biographic passages in his prefaces, for a lady named Clotilde, whose 

 death left him miserable, revealed to him, what Saint-Simon had long 

 before hinted, the deficiency aud meagreness of his philosophy on tha 

 sentimental and religious side. To make up this deficiency has been 

 the object of all his later activity. This he has attempted to do, 

 however, not by obliterating any part of his already-proclaimed 

 philosophy, not by calling back either cashiered theology or cashiered 

 metaphysics into the universe, but by supplementing jwntivisme with 

 the necessary effusion from the heart. In fact, within the last eight 

 years, M. Comte has been trying to found a new religion, consistent 

 with the fundamental doctrine of positivisme ; to accomplish which, 

 seeing that positivisme denies deity or invisible spirits of auy kind 

 apart from humanity, he makes humanity itself the object of the 

 new worship. In 1848 he published a ' Discours sur 1'Ensemble du 

 Positivisme,' in which the notion of the new religion, as the necessary 

 appendix to his philosophy, was promulgated, and iu 1849 he pub- 

 lished a singular book of a more precise nature, entitled ' Culte Sys- 

 tematique de 1'Humanite' : Calendrier positiviste, ou Sys'eme gdneYal 

 de Commemoration publique,' in which work he proposed a systematic 

 worship by humanity of itself, as represented in its greatest men of 

 all ages twelve of whom he specified as worthy to preside over the 

 twelve months of the year, while for each week he nominated sub- 

 ordinate men, and for each day minor celebrities still (it was singular 

 to the reader to note how many Frenchmen there were among these 

 gods aud godkins) ; aud also arranged some of the formalities of the 

 worship. In 1852 appeared the 'Catechisme Positiviste, ou sommaire 

 exposition de la Religion Universelle en onze Eatretiens Systematiques 

 entre une femme et un pretre de 1'Humanit^;' M. Comte himself 

 having in the meantime given practical effect to his views by assuming 

 the office and title of the chief priest of his own religion, preaching 

 as such, and performing the marriage ceremony and funeral rites 

 when called upon by his disciples to do so. His disciples in this 

 sense however have never been numerous; and while publishing his 

 last work, entitled 'Systeme de Politique Positive, ou traitB de 

 Sociologie, instituant la Religion de I'Humanitey the first volume of 

 which appeared in 1851 and the others have been issued since, he has 

 not only been in poor circumstances, but has been complaining of 

 the desertion of his pupils one after another, and expressing his 

 sorrow that he sees no one all over the earth whom, before he dies, 

 he can ordain as his successor in the chair of the new philosophy and 

 the pontificate of the new religion. 



Those who desire farther information respecting the life and views 

 of this very extraordinary personage, will find it either in his own 

 works above enumerated, or in two works published in this country 



of Augusts Comte fre ly translated aud condensed' (2 vols. 

 Comte's ' Philosophy of Mathematics ' extracted from his main work, 

 has been translated in America by W. M. Gillespie ; and his ' Popular 

 Astronomy ' also, if we mistake not, has found an English translator. 



CONCA, SEBASTIANO CAVALIERE, a celebrated Italian oil aud 

 fresco painter, was bora at Gaeta, in tho kingdom of Naples, in 1676. 

 He was for sixteen years the pupil of Solimena at Naples, but being 

 convinced of the superiority of the Roman school, he and his brother 

 Giovanni daterinined to settle in 1706 at Rome. Conca now laid aside 



2 A 



