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COMYN 



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C'omtc, AuausTK, the founder of Positivism 

 (a.v.), was horn 19th January 1798, at Montpellier, 

 wnere his father was treasurer of taxes. At the 

 Lycee of his native place he was distinguished 

 equally for his aptitude for mathematics and his 

 resistance to official authority, characteristics which 

 did not desert him on his entering the 6cole Poly- 

 technique at Paris in his seventeenth year. Here 

 he took the lend in a protest of the students against 

 the manners of one 01 the tutors, and was expelled, 

 after a residence of two years had ohtained recog- 

 nition of his ahilities from the professors. A few 

 months were spent with his parents, and then Comte 

 returned to Paris, where for a time lie made a scanty 

 living hy teaching mathematics. It would seem 

 that, some years hefore, he had completely freed 

 himself from the influence of all existing social and 

 religious theories, and a reforming zeal was begin- 

 ning to possess his mind, when in 1818 he came 

 into contact with St Simon, by whom his inclina- 

 tion towards the reconstruction of thought and life 

 was confirmed and strengthened. A definite rela- 

 tion was established between them, by which Comte 

 remained for six years the disciple and collaborator 

 of the older thinker ; but there gradually became 

 apparent a disagreement of aim and method, and 

 the necessity felt by Comte of asserting the inde- 

 pendence of his own conceptions led to a violent 

 rupture. In 1825 Comte married, but the union 

 proved unhappy, and after seventeen years of inter- 

 mittent discord, ended in a separation. In the 

 following year Comte began a course of lectures in 

 exposition of his system of philosophy, which was 

 attended by several eminent men of science, but 

 the course was soon interrupted by an attack of 

 insanity, which disabled the lecturer for a few 

 mouths. His labours were afterwards resumed, and 

 the six volumes of his Philosophie Positive was pub- 

 lished at intervals between 1830 and 1842, during 

 which period his livelihood was chiefly obtained 

 from the offices of examiner and tutor in the Ecole 

 Polytechnique. After these positions were taken 

 from him, owing to the prejudices of his colleagues, 

 he resumed the private teaching of mathematics, 

 but in his later years he was supported entirely by 

 a ' subsidy ' from his friends and admirers. In 1845 

 Comte became acquainted with Clothilde de Vaux, 

 and until her death within a year afterwards, a 

 close intimacy was maintained between them. On 

 Comte's side it was a passionate attachment, the 

 purity of which was Happily preserved, and its 

 influence is clearly shown in his later works, especi- 

 ally in the most important of these, the Politique 

 Positive. Comte died in his sixtieth year on 5th 

 September 1857. He was buried in the cemetery of 

 Pere-la-Chaise. A full account of his system will 

 lie found in the article POSITIVISM. His works are 

 i ''iurs de Philosophie Positive ( 6 vols. Paris, 1830-42 ; 

 freely translated into English, and condensed by 

 Harriet Martineau, 2 vols. 1853), Traite Elemental re 

 de Geometrie A nalytigue ( 1 843 ), Traite cCA stroii <>m ie. 

 Popidaire ( 1845), Dtscours stir I' Ensemble du Post- 

 tirixine ( 1848), Systeme de Politique Positive (4 vols. 

 1851-54; Eng. trans. 1875 et seq., Longmans), and 

 i ''iti-rhisme fositiviste, ou Sommaire Exposition de 

 la Religion Universelle ( 1 vol. Paris, 1852). Comte's 

 Testament was published with a good many of his 

 letters in 1884. 



Comiltt* i" later antiquity, a divinity of festive 

 mirth and joy, represented tut a winged youth, 

 sometimes drunk and languid as after a debauch, 01 

 slumbering in a standing posture with legs crossed. 

 Comiis thus became the representative deity of 

 riotous merry-miiking, of tipsy dance and jollity, 

 and as such figures in Milton's noble poetic tribute 

 to chastity, the mask of Cornun; though here the 

 poet, as elsewhere, has devised his own mythology, 

 and made him the child of Bacchus and of Circe, 

 'much like his father, but his mother more.' 



Comyn, CUMMING, or CUMYN, a family which 

 rose to great power and eminence in England 

 and Scotland. It took its name from the town 

 of Comines, near Lille, on the frontier between 

 France and Belgium. While one branch remained 

 there, and in 1445 gave birth to the historian 

 Philippe de Comines (a.v.), another followed the 

 banners of William of Normandy to the conquest 

 of England. In 1069 the Conqueror sent Robert 

 of Comines, or Comyn, whom he created Earl 

 of Northumberland, with 700 horse to reduce 

 the yet unsubdued provinces of the north. He 

 seized Durham, but nad not held it for 48 hours 

 when the people suddenly rose against him, and he 

 perished in the flames of the bishop's palace, leaving 

 two infant sons. The younger, William, became 

 Chancellor of Scotland about 1133, and nine years 

 later all but possessed himself of the see of Durham. 

 The chancellor's grandnephew, Richard, inherited 

 the English possessions of his family, and acquired 

 lands in Scotland. By his marriage with Hextilda, 

 the granddaughter of Donald Bane, king of the 

 Scots, he had a son William, who was Great Jus- 

 ticiary of Scotland, and about 1210 l>ecame Earl 

 of Buchan by marrying Marjory, daughter and 

 heiress of Fergus, the last Celtic Earl of Buchan. 

 Their son, Alexander, Earl of Buchau, married 

 Isabella or Elizabeth, second daughter of Roger de 

 Quenci, Earl of Winchester, and with her acquired 

 the high office of Constable of Scotland, with great 

 estates in Galloway, Fife, and the Lothians. By 

 a previous marriage with a wife whose name has 

 not been ascertained, William Comyn was father 

 of Richard whose son John ( Red John Comyn ) 

 became Lord of Badenoch and of Walter, who by 

 marriage became Earl of Menteith, and was one of 

 the guardians or regents of Scotland during the 

 minority of Alexander III. Through other mar- 

 riages the family obtained, for a time, the earl- 

 doms of Angus and Athole, so that, by the middle 

 of the 13th century, there were in Scotland 4 earls, 

 1 lord, and 32 belted knights of the name of Comyn. 

 Within seventy years afterwards this great house 

 was so utterly overthrown that, in the words of a 

 contemporary* chronicle, ' there was no memorial 

 left of it in the land, save the orisons of the monks 

 of Deer ' ( founded as a Cistercian monastery by 

 William Comyn, Earl of Buchan, in 1219 ). The 

 Comvns perished in the memorable revolution 

 widen placed Bruce on the throne of Scotland. 

 Their chief, Black John Comvn, Lord of Badenoch, 

 great-grandson of William, Earl of Buchan, had, 

 in 1291, been an unsuccessful competitor for the 

 crown, as a descendant of the old Celtic dynasty 

 through the granddaughter of King Donald Bane. 

 His son, also called Red John Comyn, was one of 

 the wardens of Scotland, and distinguished himself 

 by his gallant resistance to the English. Suspected 

 by Bruce of betraying him to Edward, Comyn fell 

 under Bruce's dagger, before the altar of the Fran- 

 ciscan friars at Dumfries in 1306 ; and his kindred 

 went down, one after another, in the struggle to 

 avenge him. John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, the 

 son of Alexander and Isabella de Quenci, was de- 

 feated by Bruce in a pitched battle, near Inverury, 

 in 1308, when his earldom was wasted with such 

 relentless severity, that we are told by the poet 



