he found M. Comte guarded by two gendarmes, and waited upon by his wife. It was determined to place the over-excited thinker under the care of Dr. J. E. D. Esquirol, the most famous physician for the insane, at the Maison des Aliénés. There Esquirol could not accommodate him, but advised his being taken to Charenton, where there was a private asylum of which he was physician-inchief. De Blainville proposed to treat him at home, but Madame Comte, believing herself incompetent to take care of him, declined to undertake the responsibility unless aided by a physician; by De Blainville's interest, Esquirol accepted him as a patient, and he was an inmate of the lunatic asylum under his charge from 18th April to 2nd December, 1826. In the meantime, Esquirol's hope of a speedy recovery showing no signs of fulfilment, Madame Comte communicated the alarming fact to his parents, and his mother, furnished with full powers from her husband, hastened to Paris, but she did not come to her daughter-in-law. His mother endeavoured to secure a legal interdiction of the patient, and thereafter his being placed in a monastery, where, under the influence of prayer and praise, his malady might be subdued, and the patient brought back to the Church, might be restored to his sound mind. Esquirol communicated with Madame Comte, and she, claiming that the interdict was needless because there was no child to be cared for, nor any fortune to be preserved, besides showing that the interdict was asked on false pretences, defeated this scheme. It had been represented that M. Comte was unmarried, that distress originating in the conduct of his mistress had led to his malady, and that he had been found by De Blainville wandering alone in the forest of Montmorency. Madame Comte proved these assertions to be false, and her husband was permitted to remain under Esquirol's care. The mother and the daughter-in-law, with little friendship for each other, but with a common love for the patient, met frequently during the summer and autumn, often squabbling with, and sometimes scolding each other. At length De Blainville expressed his conviction to Madame Auguste Comte that her husband's "cerebral exaltation was increased rather than diminished by his sense of hatred to his wardens, and his dislike to the treatment to which he was subjected. This she communicated to her mother-in-law, who wrote home to a similar effect. Comte's father wrote that he must be brought to Montpellier. Esquirol thought he could not endure the voyage, and his wife proposed that she should take him home on trial for a fortnight. His mother, under religious impressions, stimulated by the Abbé de Lamennais, who was anxious to secure to the church such a notable convert as M. Comte, insisted on an ecclesiastical marriage between him and his (civilly legal) wife. The abbé procured a dispensation from the Archbishop of Paris, that M. Comte should be married at home by the curate of the parish of Saint-Laurent, in which he lived. He sent a priest, being unwilling himself to act in so serious a matter. This priest foolishly made a long oration on the occasion, and M.

Comte rejoined by an anti-religious speech. The sad celebration. ended at length, and when he wrote his signature in the register, M. Comte added to his name the pseudonym Brutus Bonaparte. M. Comte's recovery was slow, and his wife required to run many risks from his haughty fierceness and regardless violence; but by address and devotion-a devotion extending to taking the same medicines and undergoing the same treatment as her husbandMadame Comte's victory over his insanity was complete in about two months. During this time his father made him a small allowance, and some of his friends raised the means by which he could get a little rest, recreation, and health in the country. Madness released him, but melancholy seized him, and so deep was his depression, in view of the impossibility of gaining a livelihood by his acquirements, that in the spring of 1827, during the neces sary absence of Madame Comte, he escaped from the house, and threw himself into the Seine, from the top of the Pont des Arts. A royal guard who was passing jumped in after him, and brought him to the bank. His death was announced in La France Littéraire, but he was saved, though the name of his preserver has not transpired. In July he set out for Montpellier, in a "state of quasivegetation." Home-affection, and a good constitution had succeeded in restoring him to sanity of mind, his native air brought him a restoration to sanity of body. He returned to his home gladly and hopefully.

At the close of 1827 he resumed his intellectual labours, and for a time found the means of subsistence in superintending the mathematical sections of a work which two friends of his, MM. Henri and Mellet, were engaged in translating from the English. In August he wrote a paper for the Journal of Paris (August, 1828), entitled "An Examination of the Treatise of M. Broussais upon Irritation and Madness"-a work in which the founder of the physiological school of medicine sought to establish a theory connecting all the mental and moral manifestations of which man is capable with physical causes. This exercitation in criticism brought up before him the grand panorama of thought which had been snatched for a while out of his sight, and he was able so to arrange his ideas and to recall his purpose, that on January 4th, 1829, he recommenced his course on positive philosophy in his house, at No. 159, Rue St. Jacques, to an audience which, besides most of those who attended the inaugural discourses in 1826, comprised Fourier (the mathematician), Broussais, Esquirol, Binet, &c. The positive philosophy was now unveiled and expounded; his contemporaries had heard it, and the proper work of Comte's life was begun-a work immense not only in the labour it entailed, but in the influences it was to exert on history, science, philosophy, and social existence.

The elaboration of the general course of thought to which he had devoted himself was now begun by M. Comte, and in 1830, after presenting a brief outline of his ideas on the progress of thought

and the history of science in the Athenæum, he began the composition of his great work, "The Course of Positive Philosophy," of which the first volume was issued in 1832, and the other five at differing intervals up till 1842. The devotion of twelve years of study, reflection, and criticism, condensed itself into these six volumes as the essence at once of science, history, morals, theology, and human progress-the experience of the past gathered and garnered to enrich the present and provide unfailing supplies for the future-experience no longer used like the hind lights of a vessel to cast its light over the paths that had been traversed; but brought, as it were, into an intellectual Pharos, to explain the past, gladden the present, and brighten the future. This noble devotion of soul, this stern self-restraint which refused to yield to the yearnings of the heart for appreciation and instant approval, to sell the truth as it rose into the view of the soul for the supply of the daily wants of life, to succumb to the entreaties of friends or the taunts of foes, the distractions of the politics of the time, or the ambitions which saw the chances of the prizes of life departing, or to cater for the applause of the day by hasty and rash utterances likely to catch the tastes of the times-this courageous calm, this heroic daring and enduring, this flinchless labour amidst poverty, pecuniary anxieties, and bread-getting pursuits, is an admirable example of the positive philosophy of earnestness on which success depends. The work produced by him was indeed great, but the man, the hero, was greater, nobler even than his work.

The memory and the industry of M. Comte were alike prodigious. He learned English, Spanish, Italian, and German, by self-application-taking up a book in which he felt interested, and with a grammar and dictionary beside him, working into himself not only an adequate knowledge of the contents of the book studied, but also of the spirit and genius of the language in which it was written. By far the greater part of his reading was accomplished prior to 1826. After that, on principle, he neither read nor re-read many books, but devoted himself to the elaboration of his great conception of a philosophy which should make all mysteries plain. His immense store of facts and repositories of information were, when once filled, always ready at hand for immediate service. His books were all planned in his mind without notes or writing; first in grand outline, then in special subdivisions, and subsequently the details proper to each section. This done, he regarded the work as matured. Then he commenced writing, and composed right onwards, sending to press, and seldom revising what he had written. Long conception was followed by rapid birth. It had power in it, this grand mental activity; but it sadly, as in 1826, overcharged the cerebral functions, and did not do justice to the literary form of his works.

M. Comte had no resources, neither fortune, position, nor pension; he subsisted by taking private pupils, his excellence as a teacher was recognised, and he gained by this harassing task-work

the means of bestowing on the world the treasure of his thoughts. In February, 1831, he became a candidate for the chair of Analysis and of Rational Mechanics in the Polytechnic School, but he failed. In the same year he commenced a gratuitous course of popular Sunday lectures on astronomy, and this course he continued to deliver annually from 1831 to 1848, without withdrawal of the authorization granted, notwithstanding the boldness of his views and the thoroughgoing republicanism of his heart and soul. This republicanism had in 1830 been brought into public manifestation by his refusal to take his place in the national guard because that was instituted to preserve the government France chose, and was not intended to be used in political strifes. He was imprisoned for three days for refusing to take an oath to defend the government"a government which," said he, "were I a man of action, I would contend against, at the peril of my own life and that of others."

M. Chevalier, having spoken slightingly of M. Comte's secession from Saint-Simonianism in the Globe, January 3rd, 1832, M. Comte forwarded a lengthy protest against its being supposed that he had ever been connected with the association of Saint-Simonians, acknowledged his intimate friendship with their chief, denied being under obligations to him for any of the elements of his system, and explained his position with regard to that system as one of independent progressiveness and personal originality. M. Guizot, as minister of education, was engaged in reforming and improving the higher teaching in France, and was instituting new Chairs for the promulgation of branches of knowledge not included in the programme of the elder universities. Hearing of this, M. Comte (29th October, 1832) forwarded a scheme for the creation of a chair of the General History of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in the college of France. This led to an interview and some talk, in the course of which M. Comte laid before the minister his claim to fill such a chair should it be instituted. Guizot had never heard of him, and he records in his Memoirs" that M. Comte "was a simple, honest, earnest man, devoted to his ideas, modest in appearance, although, in truth, prodigiously proud," "but one who sincerely believed that he was called to open up to the human mind and to human society a new era." M. Guizot's advisers taught him to repulse Comte and to contemn his suggestion.

In 1832 he was chosen tutor in the Polytechnic School; subsequently he was elected (1836) to be examiner for admission to the same school, and professor at the Laville Institution. In 1836 he sought again a chair in the Polytechnic School, and was defeated in his candidature by M. Liouville. On the death of M. Navier in 1836, he renewed his claim to a professorship, and again-though he taught the class for two months during the vacancy-another, M. Duhamel, was preferred. In July, 1840, he applied again for recognition as a professor, but was with greater alacrity and unanimity than before set on the shady side by the Academy. The disastrous influence upon his success in these repeated candidatures

M. Comte believed to proceed from M. Arago, and in a note to the preface of the sixth and closing volume of his magnum opus, the "Course of Positive Philosophy," he expressly charged that savant with being the leading agent in holding him down. The publisher, M. Bachelier, asked Comte to suppress this note, as he was under obligations to M. Arago; but the excited author would not listen to the cool man of business, and insisted on its publication. M. Bachelier inserted in the volume an advertisement, including a note from Arago, "explanatory of the disagreement between M. Comte" and himself. Comte instantly raised an action against his publisher to cause him (1) to suppress the advertisement in all the unissued copies; (2) to recall all issued copies, and to delete it therefrom; (3) to pay 10,000 francs as damages. Arago and Comte were to implead each other through the publisher. He was his own advocate, and he gained his main ends,-publicity to his case, an opportunity of testing his position with the public, and the deletion of the obnoxious advertisement. But it was not a victory in which all was gain. It led to a rallying of the forces of his opponents, to his being ultimately ejected from his examinership-a situation which was held by an annual tenure, and to his dismissal from the Laville Institution. So much could be done by partisanship and personal spite against a functionary who had fulfilled all the duties of his office with punctuality, honesty, ability, and eminent success. It had also a more serious private issue in bringing the relations between M. Comte and his wife, which had for some time been less than friendly, to an open rupture, and ended in a voluntary separation between them, after a long-continued endurance of matrimonial civil war, domestic duelling, and incompatibility of temper.

This separation was conducted with great complacency, deliberation, and mutual considerateness; though M. Comte, in selfwilled determination to write a preface which Madame Comte foresaw would injure his material interests, and involve them in domestic troubles, treated her dissuasions with scorn and herself with such rudeness, that she did not feel justified in submitting to his imperious requirements and his overmasterful conduct; she consented to continue to manage his household affairs till his great work was finished, and he should begin to feel the glory of his achievements, and have leisure to spare in making new arrangements in regard to home, scholastic duties, and literary conveniences. The separation involved no loss of esteem, and there had never been any, or at least any great degree of affection between them. He recognised her goodness, her right to gratitude, and her noble moral character; while she admitted his greatness, admired his genius, and acquitted him of any unhusbandly vice. They corresponded regularly for many years. He allowed her a pension; and she followed his career with appreciating intellect, though with a sense of personal injustice endured from him, partly owing to the influence of his family-who were