ndar. In the years 1849, 1850 and 1851 Comte gave three courses of
lectures at the Palais Royal. They were gratuitous and popular, and in
them he boldly advanced the whole of his doctrine, as well as the direct
and immediate pretensions of himself and his system. The third course
ended in the following uncompromising terms--"In the name of the Past
and of the Future, the servants of Humanity--both its philosophical and
its practical servants--come forward to claim as their due the general
direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at length a real
Providence in all departments,--moral, intellectual and material.
Consequently they exclude once for all from political supremacy all the
different servants of God--Catholic, Protestant or Deist--as being at
once behindhand and a cause of disturbance." A few weeks after this
invitation, a very different person stepped forward to constitute
himself a real Providence.

In 1852 Comte published the _Catechism of Positivism_. In the preface to
it he took occasion to express his approval of Louis Napoleon's _coup
d'etat_ of the 2nd of December,--"a fortunate crisis which has set aside
the parliamentary system and instituted a dictatorial republic."
Whatever we may think of the political sagacity of such a judgment, it
is due to Comte to say that he did not expect to see his dictatorial
republic transformed into a dynastic empire, and, next, that he did
expect from the Man of December freedom of the press and of public
meeting. His later hero was the emperor Nicholas, "the only statesman in
Christendom,"--as unlucky a judgment as that which placed Dr Francia in
the Comtist Calendar.

Death.

In 1857 he was attacked by cancer, and died peaceably on the 5th of
September of that year. The anniversary is celebrated by ceremonial
gatherings of his French and English followers, who then commemorate the
name and the services of the founder of their religion. By his will he
appointed thirteen executors who were to preserve his rooms at 10 rue
Monsieur-le-Prince as the headquarters of the new religion of Humanity.

Comte's philosophic consistency.

Early writing.

In proceeding to give an Outline of Comte's system, we shall consider
the _Positive Polity_ as the more or less legitimate sequel of the
_Positive Philosophy_, notwithstanding the deep gulf which so eminent a
critic as J. S. Mill insisted upon fixing between the earlier and the
later work. There may be,