tion, making short
notes as he went on, to guide the listener in repeating the problem
alone; then, taking up another cahier which lay beside him, he went over
the written repetition of the former lesson. He explained, corrected or
commented till the clock struck nine; then, with the little finger of
the right hand brushing from his coat and waistcoat the shower of
superfluous snuff which had fallen on them, he pocketed his snuff-box,
and resuming his hat, he as silently as when he came in made his exit by
the door which I rushed to open for him."

Completion of "Positive Philosophy."

In 1842, as we have said, the last volume of the _Positive Philosophy_
was given to the public. Instead of that contentment which we like to
picture as the reward of twelve years of meritorious toil devoted to the
erection of a high philosophic edifice, Comte found himself in the midst
of a very sea of small troubles, of that uncompensated kind that harass
without elevating, and waste a man's spirit without softening or
enlarging it. First, the jar of temperament between Comte and his wife
had become so unbearable that they separated (1842). We know too little
of the facts to allot blame to either of them. In spite of one or two
disadvantageous facts in her career, Madame Comte seems to have
uniformly comported herself towards her husband with an honourable
solicitude for his well-being. Comte made her an annual allowance, and
for some years after the separation they corresponded on friendly terms.
Next in the list of the vexations was a lawsuit with his publisher. The
publisher had inserted in the sixth volume a protest against a certain
footnote, in which Comte had used some hard words about Arago. Comte
threw himself into the suit with an energy worthy of Voltaire and won
it. Third, and worst of all, he had prefixed a preface to the sixth
volume, in which he went out of his way to rouse the enmity of the men
on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of examiner for the
Polytechnic school. The result was that he lost the appointment, and
with it one-half of his very modest income. This was the occasion of an
episode, which is of more than merely personal interest.

J. S. Mill.

Before 1842 Comte had been in correspondence with J. S. Mill, who had
been greatly impressed by Comte's philosophic ideas; Mill admits that
his own _System of Logic_ owes many valuable thoughts to Comte, and
that, in the portion of that work