ideal of a vocation.

For a moment circumstances led him to think of seeking a career in
America, but a friend who preceded him thither warned him of the purely
practical spirit that prevailed in the new country. "If Lagrange were to
come to the United States, he could only earn his livelihood by turning
land surveyor." So Comte remained in Paris, living as he best could on
something less than L80 a year, and hoping, when he took the trouble to
break his meditations upon greater things by hopes about himself, that
he might by and by obtain an appointment as mathematical master in a
school. A friend procured him a situation as tutor in the house of
Casimir Perier. The salary was good, but the duties were too
miscellaneous, and what was still worse, there was an end of the
delicious liberty of the garret. After a short experience of three weeks
Comte returned to neediness and contentment. He was not altogether
without the young man's appetite for pleasure; yet when he was only
nineteen we find him wondering, amid the gaieties of the carnival of
1817, how a gavotte or a minuet could make people forget that thirty
thousand human beings around them had barely a morsel to eat.

Towards 1818 Comte became associated as friend and disciple with
Saint-Simon, who was destined to exercise a very decisive influence upon
the turn of his speculation. In after years he so far forgot himself as
to write of Saint-Simon as a depraved quack, and to deplore his
connexion with him as purely mischievous. While the connexion lasted he
thought very differently. Saint-Simon is described as the most estimable
and lovable of men, and the most delightful in his relations; he is the
worthiest of philosophers. Even at the very moment when Comte was
congratulating himself on having thrown off the yoke, he honestly admits
that Saint-Simon's influence has been of powerful service in his
philosophic education. "I certainly," he writes to his most intimate
friend, "am under great personal obligations to Saint-Simon; that is to
say, he helped in a powerful degree to launch me in the philosophical
direction that I have now definitely marked out for myself, and that I
shall follow without looking back for the rest of my life." Even if
there were no such unmistakable expressions as these, the most cursory
glance into Saint-Simon's writings is enough to reveal the thread of
connexion between the ingenious visionary and the systematic thinker. We
see the debt,