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Updated: May 9, 2025
"You see, my dear fellow, that I am not afraid of a duel," he said with comical gravity, as he looked at Monsieur Longueville. "Nor am I," replied the young man, promptly cocking his pistol; he aimed at the hole made by the Comte's bullet, and sent his own close to it. "That is what I call a well-educated man," cried the admiral with enthusiasm.
As J. S. Mill remarks, this erroneous identification of 'power' with 'will' gives the 'psychological rationale of Comte's great historical generalisation'; and, so far, Brown, as a follower of Hume, is clearly on the way to positivism. The world, then, is a vast aggregate of 'loose' phenomena. A contemplation of things reveals no reason for one order rather than another.
The fourth volume disappointed me: it contained those of his opinions on social subjects with which I most disagree. I had been long an ardent admirer of Comte's writings before I had any communication with himself; nor did I ever, to the last, see him in the body. But for some years we were frequent correspondents, until our correspondence became controversial, and our zeal cooled.
The only other imperfection worth noticing here, which we find in M. Comte's view of history, is that he has a very insufficient understanding of the peculiar phaenomena of English development; though he recognizes, and on the whole correctly estimates, its exceptional character in relation to the general European movement.
He looked handsome, elegant, and attractive as on the day of their betrothal. He shook the comte's hairy paw, kissed the hand of the comtesse, whose ivory cheeks colored up slightly while her eyelids quivered. He began to speak; he was charming as in former days. His large eyes, the mirrors of love, had become tender again.
But this fresh assertion strengthened Comte's assertion. And, moreover, according to the ingenuous confession of the founder of Darwin's theory himself, his idea was aroused in him by the law of Malthus; and he therefore propounded the theory of the struggle of living creatures and people for existence, as the fundamental law of every living thing.
It was Comte's incessant teaching that the sciences were to be cultivated, not as ends in themselves, but as means whereby to further human welfare. He would have the astronomer and physiologist pursue their tasks, not merely for the sake of acquiring knowledge, for the gratification of the curiosity to know, but for the betterment of man's lot.
Weakness multiplied by two does not give strength, and naught times naught equals naught. Having finished the Positive Philosophy, Comte's restless mind began to look around for more worlds to conquer. In the expenditure of money he was careful, and in his accounts exact; but the making of money and its accumulation were things that to him could safely be delegated to second-class minds.
That the three states were contemporaneous, that they all began before authentic history, and still coexist, is M. Comte's express statement: as well as that the advent of the two later modes of thought was the very cause which disorganized and is gradually destroying the primitive one.
Among the direct successors of Hume, the writer who has best stated and defended Comte's fundamental doctrine is Dr Thomas Brown. The doctrine and spirit of Brown's philosophy are entirely Positivist, and no better introduction to Positivism than the early part of his Lectures has yet been produced.
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