494 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



46. 

 Greater 

 appeal of 

 some of 

 Comte's 

 qualities to 

 English 

 readers. 



and eclecticism. Moreover, all these, and many others 

 among their associates and followers, were active poli- 

 ticians or popular lecturers commanding large and 

 representative audiences. On the other side, Comte, 

 though a founder of the science of politics, was not a 

 politician, and was rather a teacher in a class-room than 

 an elegant lecturer. The wave of poetry, romance, and 

 oratory which then ran very high in his country, both 

 in politics and literature, left him out of sight and 

 unrecognised. He had to wait till it had spent its force 

 or till others, largely inspired by him, added the charm 

 of language and diction to the solid ideas which he 

 had elaborated. 



But the very absence of some of those qualities of 

 style which are so prominent in the great models 

 of French literature and thought and so seductive to 

 the French public, was a recommendation in the eyes 

 of such sober and methodical thinkers as then formed 

 the utilitarian school of thought in this country, with 

 John Stuart Mill as its principal exponent. The 

 rhetorical side of French speculation has never appealed 

 to the British mind. It is difficult to translate, being 

 foreign to the idiom of the English language. If 

 rendered in this it is apt to appear thin and trite or 

 even ludicrous. Now it is, inter alia, a remarkable fact 

 that the English translation of such writings of Comte 

 as the early Tract referred to above exhibits few traces 

 of its foreign origin, and reads much more like the 

 exposition of an English writer, such as, for instance. 

 Buckle. To these somewhat external qualities, through 

 which no doubt Comte's writings found favour with 



