THE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE RECONSIDERED. 261 



Morley perhaps derived his ideas of the treatment of oppressed 

 nationalities from tliis source. 



I am Sony that Mr. Slater should have tliought it necessary to 

 refer to Comte's private life. He vpas mad when he quarrelled 

 with his wife, and his relations to Madame C. de Vaiix were, E 

 believe, irreproachable. Comte was austerely virtuous, troubled 

 only by an inordinate self-esteem. With almost everything else 

 in the author's clear and interesting paper I have only to express 

 my entire concurrence. 



Professor H. Langhorne Orchard, M.A., B.Sc. — I think it is 

 rather unfortunate that Comte's three stages of intellectual evolu- 

 tion are not allied to each other. They are not helpful to one 

 another, but opposed to one another. The author has, I think, 

 helped us to judge of Comte's true place and position as a philo- 

 sopher, and has shown the very unscientific character of his mind. 

 Comte attempted to classify the sciences and made mistakes which 

 betrayed ignorance. He attempted to classify the different branches 

 of science and physics and bungled. He made the prophecy that 

 there was no connection between Astronomy and Chemistry — a 

 prophecy which the subsequent discoveries of the spectroscope blew 

 to the winds. Comte cannot, then, be regarded as having a scientific 

 mind, neither do I think he had a philosophical mind. His second 

 fundamental conception was that " There are but three phases of 

 intellectual evolution for the individual as well as for the mass — 

 the theological (supernatural, or, it might be said, the personifying), 

 the metaphysical, and the positive "—that conception in that order 

 appears to me to be utterly at variance with the true state of 

 facts. It is supported neither by history nor experience. Comte's 

 philosophy, in fact, has this great demerit : that it is not a 

 philosophy at all. The great mission of philosophy — in fact, the 

 very raison d'etre of philosophy — is the investigation of causes ; 

 but it is just this investigation of causes that Comte taboos, and 

 yet he supposes that his own system is, somehow or other, to 

 effect an improvement in human conduct. He appears, after all, 

 to entertain the notion of an end, but he does not see that the 

 idea of an end and the means to an end involve the idea of cause. 

 Means are really the connection between cause and effect. Comte, 

 in tabooing cause, really tabooed philosophy. In any complete 

 process of knowledge we commonly have these three stages con- 

 nected one with another. This is seen in the case of the un- 



