nity and infinitesimals, &c,
all cleared up and put on a rational footing in the highly philosophical
treatises of Professor De Morgan.

[9] Those who wish to see this idea followed out, are referred to "A
System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive." It is not irrelevant to
state that M. Comte, soon after the publication of that work, expressed,
both in a letter (published in M. Littre's volume) and in print, his
high approval of it (especially of the Inductive part) as a real
contribution to the construction of the Positive Method. But we cannot
discover that he was indebted to it for a single idea, or that it
influenced, in the smallest particular, the course of his subsequent
speculations.

[10] The force, however, of this last consideration has been much
weakened by the progress of discovery since M. Comte left off studying
chemistry; it being now probable that most if not all substances, even
elementary, are susceptible of _allotropic_ forms; as in the case of
oxygen and ozone, the two forms of phosphorus, &c.

[11] Thus; by considering prussic acid as a compound of hydrogen and
cyanogen rather than of hydrogen and the elements of cyanogen (carbon
and nitrogen), it is assimilated to a whole class of acid compounds
between hydrogen and other substances, and a reason is thus found for
its agreeing in their acid properties.

[12] According to Sir William Hamilton, as many as six; but numerical
precision in such matters is out of the question, and it is probable
that different minds have the power in different degrees.

[13] Or, as afterwards corrected by him, the appetites and emotions, the
active capacities, and the intellectual faculties; "le coeur," "le
caractere," and "l'esprit."

[14] M. Littre, who, though a warm admirer, and accepting the position
of a disciple of M. Comte, is singularly free from his errors, makes the
equally ingenious and just remark, that Political Economy corresponds in
social science to the theory of the nutritive functions in biology,
which M. Comte, with all good physiologists, thinks it not only
permissible but a great and fundamental improvement to treat, in the
first place, separately, as the necessary basis of the higher branches
of the science: although the nutritive functions can no more be
withdrawn _in fact_ from the influence of the animal and human
attributes, than the economical phaenomena of society from that of the
political and moral.

[15] Indeed his claim to be