without relief and without light. There is now and then an
energetic phrase, but as a whole the vocabulary is jejune; the sentences
are overloaded; the pitch is flat. A scrupulous insistence on making his
meaning clear led to an iteration of certain adjectives and adverbs,
which at length deadened the effect beyond the endurance of all but the
most resolute students. Only the interest of the matter prevents one
from thinking of Rivarol's ill-natured remark upon Condorcet, that he
wrote with opium on a page of lead. The general effect is impressive,
not by any virtues of style, for we do not discern one, but by reason of
the magnitude and importance of the undertaking, and the visible
conscientiousness and the grasp with which it is executed. It is by
sheer strength of thought, by the vigorous perspicacity with which he
strikes the lines of cleavage of his subject, that he makes his way
into the mind of the reader; in the presence of gifts of this power we
need not quarrel with an ungainly style.

Hygiene cerebrale.

Comte pursued one practice which ought to be mentioned in connexion with
his personal history, the practice of what he style _hygiene cerebrale_.
After he had acquired what he considered to be a sufficient stock of
material, and this happened before he had completed the _Positive
Philosophy_, he abstained from reading newspapers, reviews, scientific
transactions and everything else, except two or three poets (notably
Dante) and the _Imitatio Christi_. It is true that his friends kept him
informed of what was going on in the scientific world. Still this
partial divorce of himself from the record of the social and scientific
activity of his time, though it may save a thinker from the deplorable
evils of dispersion, moral and intellectual, accounts in no small
measure for the exaggerated egoism, and the absence of all feeling for
reality, which marked Comte's later days.

Madame de Vaux.

In 1845 Comte made the acquaintance of Madame Clotilde de Vaux, a lady
whose husband had been sent to the galleys for life. Very little is
known about her qualities. She wrote a little piece which Comte rated so
preposterously as to talk about George Sand in the same sentence; it is
in truth a flimsy performance, though it contains one or two gracious
thoughts. There is true beauty in the saying--"_It is unworthy of a
noble nature to diffuse its pain._" Madame de Vaux's letters speak well
for her good sense and goo