i88i.J 
An Estimate of Auguste Comte . 
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a most valuable impulse to organic science. Adting as he 
did he has given a proof of deficiency in profound philoso- 
phic insight ; in the spirit which anticipates the future track 
of discovery. More than this, he has thrown his weight 
into the scale of the reactionary school of Cuvier. Unless 
I am greatly misinformed many of the “ Positivists ” in 
England and France still think it necessary to rejedt Evolu- 
tion. For all this certain sages in England have a hazy kind 
of notion that “ Monsieur Comte ” is, in some circuitous 
manner, an accomplice of Darwin ! Did Comte ever take 
the trouble to give Lamarck’s writings a fair examination ? 
An interesting by-question might here be raised : why has 
France, unlike Britain, Germany, and America, taken so 
little part in the cultivation of the New Biology ? It cannot 
be entirely due to the personal influence of two eminent 
naturalists, one of them long ago dead and the other still 
living. I read lately an anonymous article in which a French 
zoologist complains of the low position to which the science 
has fallen in consequence of official alethophobia. 
One of the peculiarities of Comte is that he denies to 
psychology the rank of an independent science. Here it 
must not be overlooked that he is not followed by his expo- 
sitor, G. H. Lewes, nor by his admirer (in many respedts), 
John Stuart Mill. Both these writers contend that, should 
mind be ultimately proved to be merely a fundtion of the 
nervous centres, the successions and co-existences of mental 
states are capable of being diredtly studied without reference 
to the cerebral changes which may be their immediate ante- 
cedents. Even if life is simply a play of matter, thought is 
a higher phase of life, displaying special phenomena, and 
admitting, or rather requiring, special study. 
We come here to a consideration of Comte’s phrenology. 
Rejedting the ordinary craniological system as originated by 
Gall, he still holds to the principle that the brain consists of 
a number of distindt organs, each the seat of some particular 
faculty. But he assigns each faculty its seat not in conse- 
quence of comparative observations, but, as I cannot help 
saying, arbitrarily, — i.e ., according to his own notions as to 
where they ought to be fixed, — and leaves to anatomists the 
task of discovering evidence in favour of his system, which 
so far has not been forthcoming. It is scarcely necessary to 
say that the Comtean phrenology has to encounter ail the 
difficulties which beset the system of Gall, without its em- 
pirical evidence. The two are not in harmony. Comte 
places the nutritive and the sexual instindt (alimentiveness 
and amativeness of Gall), the former in the centre of the 
