COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



dozen or fifteen years, Comte's life was such as 

 to make a man insane, if anything could ; and 

 we should not forget, whatever may be the 

 physiological significance of the fact, that in his 

 early manhood he had experienced a violent 

 attack of acute mania. His astounding self-con- 

 ceit was more akin to that which may be seen 

 in lunatic asylums than to anything which is 

 known to have been manifested by persons in 

 a state of health. I am strongly incHned to be- 

 lieve that the harmonious activity of his brain 

 never fully recovered from the shock given it 

 by that first attack. Very likely that attack is 

 partly responsible for the self-brooding tend- 

 ency which led him to abandon the world, and 

 lead a secluded life among his own unbridled 

 fancies. And it is not improbable that this 

 long-continued self-communion carried him on 

 the road to chronic subacute monomania, until, 

 when he wrote the " Synthese Subjective," he 

 had just overstepped the ill-defined limit which 

 divides precarious cerebral health from pro- 

 nounced cerebral disease. Nevertheless this 

 hypothesis, though it seems most plausible, is 

 perhaps not absolutely required by the facts. 

 In this chapter we have seen how an exclusive 

 reliance on the subjective method has bred in 

 others besides Comte the most shocking ex- 

 travagances. It may be, after all, that Comte's 

 vagaries are not so very much wilder than those 



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