INTRODUCTORY. 43 



French philosophical Thought, for a considerable period, 

 preserved a purely eclectic character, and did so even 

 long after an independent and novel system of philo- 

 sophy had been elaborated in its midst, which was 

 destined to exert a very powerful influence, first in 

 England and later in France itself. This system, the 

 philosophy of Auguste Comte, did not seek an extension 33. 

 of scientific research in the direction of psychology, which comte. 

 indeed it discouraged in a very peremptory fashion ; it 

 attached itself to that line of Thought which has always 

 marked the strongest side of French genius ; the mathe- 

 matical rather than the essentially empirical develop- 

 ment of knowledge. Those three great characteristics of 

 German, English, and French philosophy during the first 

 half of the century, the metaphysical, the psychological, 

 and the mathematical, are intimately connected with the 

 state of higher culture in these three countries auring 

 that period. 



England had developed, ever since the time of Bacon, 34. 

 the experimental or empirical philosophy of nature : it empiricism. 

 was only natural that a similar empirical treatment of 

 mental life should suggest itself as the necessary com- 

 plement of that philosophy. The brilliant achievements 

 of French Science, building upon the mathematical 

 foundations laid by Newton and Lagrange, suggested in 

 the mind of Auguste Comte the idea of a positive or 

 exact philosophy. 



But in one point the British and the French mind 35. 



Social point 



were in harmony, and this accounts for the interest of view in 



France and 



which England took in Comte's philosophy in the middle En g land - 

 of the century. Both countries had witnessed in the 



