THE DISAGREEMENTS FUNDAMENTAL. 131 



starting from the same general doctrines established by 

 modern science, should traverse some of the same fields of 

 inquiry, without their lines of thought having any points 

 of intersection. But none of these minor agreements can be 

 of much weight in comparison with the fundamental dis 

 agreements above specified. Leaving out of view that general 

 community which we both have with the scientific thought 

 of the age, the differences between us are essential, while 

 the correspondences are non-essential. And I venture to 

 think that kinship must be determined by essentials, and 

 not by non-essentials.* 



Joined with the ambiguous use of the phrase &quot;Positive 

 Philosophy,&quot; which has led to a classing with M. Comte 

 of many men who either ignore or reject his distinctive 

 principles, there has been one special circumstance that has 

 tended to originate and maintain this classing in my own 

 case. The assumption of some relationship between M. Comte 

 and myself, was unavoidably raised by the title of my first 

 book Social Statics. When that book was published, I was 

 unaware that this title had been before used : had I 

 known the fact, I should certainly have adopted an alternative 

 title which I had in view.f If, however, instead of the title, 



* In his recent work, Auguste Comte ct la Philosophic Positive, M. Littre, 

 defending the Comtean classification of the sciences from the criticism I made 

 upon it in the &quot; Genesis of Science,&quot; deals with me wholly as an antagonist. 

 The chapter he devotes to his reply, opens by placing me in direct antithesis 

 to the English adherents of Comte, named in the preceding chapter. 



t I believed at the time, and have never doubted until now, that the choice 

 of this title was absolutely independent of its previous use by M. Comte. While 

 writing these pages, I have found reason to think the contrary. On referring to Social 

 Statics, to see what were my views of social evolution in 1850, when M. Comte 

 was to me but a name, I met with the following sentence : &quot; Social philosophy 

 may be aptly divided (as political economy has been) into statics and dynamics.&quot; 

 (p. 409). This I remembered to be a reference to a division which I had seen in 

 the Political Economy of Mr. Mill. But why had I not mentioned Mr. Mill s name? 

 On referring to the first edition of his work, I found, at the opening of Book iv., 

 this sentence : &quot;The three preceding parts include as detailed a view as the limits 

 of this treatise permit, of what, by a happy generalization of a mathematical 

 phrase, has been called the Statics of the subject.&quot; Here was the solution of the 

 question. The division had not been made by Mr. Mill, but by some writer 

 (on Political Economy I supposed) who was not named by him ; and whom I did 

 not know. It is now manifest, however, that while I supposed I was giving 

 a more extended use to this division, I was but returning to the original use 



