398 An Estimate of Auguste Comte . [July, 
the absence of liability to have the equilibrium of 
nervous activity disturbed. 
5. Vocal or instrumental music, as shown in serpent- 
charming, lizard-catching, the efficacy of music in 
the treatment of mental disease, &c. 
Dr. Beard remarks that the only difference between what 
is called absent-mindedness and the decided trance, in which 
a person or other animal may remain unconscious even for 
years, is one of degree. He deserves the warm thanks of 
naturalists for the light he has thrown on some of the most 
obscure fadts of animal psychology, and for the clean sweep 
which he has made of certain plausible superstitions. 
III. AN ESTIMATE OF AUGUSTE COMTE. 
By G. H. C. 
f OME thirty years ago the English public was told, by a 
brilliant and versatile writer, of one who was pro- 
claimed to be “the greatest thinker of modern times/' 
— a man whose dodtrine was to the nineteenth something 
more than that which Bacon’s was to the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries.” The world heard, — some in undis- 
guised alarm lest the new philosophy should be merely 
“ infidelity ” under a fresh disguise. Others listened with 
eager hope, and a few perhaps with critical reserve. My 
task to-day is, leaving religious and political speculations to 
more specially qualified hands, to enquire what has been the 
outcome of this “ Positive Philosophy ” as far as Science is 
concerned ? It is well known that Comte did not intend or 
attempt to furnish in his great work a series of treatises on 
the various sciences ; but he sought to display them in their 
mutual relations, as a coherent hierarchy, arranged on na- 
tural principles. He sketched their history, their present 
position, and in some sort their future prospedts, and ex- 
pounded their methods, their leading dodtrines, and the part 
each has to play in the education of mankind. No one can 
dispute either the difficulty or the importance of the under- 
taking, which if performed aright must have given a powerful 
