order, which, in his
system, has all the power that ever they had, would be oppressive in the
same manner; with no variation but that which arises from the altered
state of society and of the human mind.

M. Comte's partiality to the theocracies is strikingly contrasted with
his dislike of the Greeks, whom as a people he thoroughly detests, for
their undue addiction to intellectual speculation, and considers to have
been, by an inevitable fatality, morally sacrificed to the formation of
a few great scientific intellects,--principally Aristotle, Archimedes,
Apollonius, and Hipparchus. Any one who knows Grecian history as it can
now be known, will be amazed at M. Comte's travestie of it, in which the
vulgarest historical prejudices are accepted and exaggerated, to
illustrate the mischiefs of intellectual culture left to its own
guidance.

There is no need to analyze further M. Comte's second view of universal
history. The best chapter is that on the Romans, to whom, because they
were greater in practice than in theory, and for centuries worked
together in obedience to a social sentiment (though only that of their
country's aggrandizement), M. Comte is as favourably affected, as he is
inimical to all but a small selection of eminent thinkers among the
Greeks. The greatest blemish in this chapter is the idolatry of Julius
Caesar, whom M. Comte regards as one of the most illustrious characters
in history, and of the greatest practical benefactors of mankind. Caesar
had many eminent qualities, but what he did to deserve such praise we
are at a loss to discover, except subverting a free government: that
merit, however, with M. Comte, goes a great way. It did not, in his
former days, suffice to rehabilitate Napoleon, whose name and memory he
regarded with a bitterness highly honourable to himself, and whose
career he deemed one of the greatest calamities in modern history. But
in his later writings these sentiments are considerably mitigated: he
regards Napoleon as a more estimable "dictator" than Louis Philippe, and
thinks that his greatest error was re-establishing the Academy of
Sciences! That this should be said by M. Comte, and said of Napoleon,
measures the depth to which his moral standard had fallen.

The last volume which he published, that on the Philosophy of
Mathematics, is in some respects a still sadder picture of intellectual
degeneracy than those which preceded it. After the admirable resume of
the subject in