and we also see that when it is stated at the highest
possible, nothing has really been taken either from Comte's claims as a
powerful original thinker, or from his immeasurable pre-eminence over
Saint-Simon in intellectual grasp and vigour and coherence. As high a
degree of originality may be shown in transformation as in invention, as
Moliere and Shakespeare have proved in the region of dramatic art. In
philosophy the conditions are not different. _Il faut prendre son bien
ou on le trouve._

It is no detriment to Comte's fame that some of the ideas which he
recombined and incorporated in a great philosophic structure had their
origin in ideas that were produced almost at random in the incessant
fermentation of Saint-Simon's brain. Comte is in no true sense a
follower of Saint-Simon, but it was undoubtedly Saint-Simon who launched
him, to take Comte's own word, by suggesting the two starting-points of
what grew into the Comtist system--first, that political phenomena are
as capable of being grouped under laws as other phenomena; and second,
that the true destination of philosophy must be social, and the true
object of the thinker must be the reorganization of the moral, religious
and political systems. We can readily see what an impulse these
far-reaching conceptions would give to Comte's meditations. There were
conceptions of less importance than these, in which it is impossible not
to feel that it was Saint-Simon's wrong or imperfect idea that put his
young admirer on the track to a right and perfected idea. The subject is
not worthy of further discussion. That Comte would have performed some
great intellectual achievement, if Saint-Simon had never been born, is
certain. It is hardly less certain that the great achievement which he
did actually perform was originally set in motion by Saint-Simon's
conversation, though it was afterwards directly filiated with the
fertile speculations of A. R. J. Turgot and Condorcet. Comte thought
almost as meanly of Plato as he did of Saint-Simon, and he considered
Aristotle the prince of all true thinkers; yet their vital difference
about Ideas did not prevent Aristotle from calling Plato master.

After six years the differences between the old and the young
philosopher grew too marked for friendship. Comte began to fret under
Saint-Simon's pretensions to be his director. Saint-Simon, on the other
hand, perhaps began to feel uncomfortably conscious of the superiority
of his discip