g it known. To have put those who neither knew nor were
capable of appreciating the greatness of the book, in possession of its
vulnerable points, would have indefinitely retarded its progress to a
just estimation, and was not needful for guarding against any serious
inconvenience. While a writer has few readers, and no influence except
on independent thinkers, the only thing worth considering in him is what
he can teach us: if there be anything in which he is less wise than we
are already, it may be left unnoticed until the time comes when his
errors can do harm. But the high place which M. Comte has now assumed
among European thinkers, and the increasing influence of his principal
work, while they make it a more hopeful task than before to impress and
enforce the strong points of his philosophy, have rendered it, for the
first time, not inopportune to discuss his mistakes. Whatever errors he
may have fallen into are now in a position to be injurious, while the
free exposure of them can no longer be so.

We propose, then, to pass in review the main principles of M. Comte's
philosophy; commencing with the great treatise by which, in this
country, he is chiefly known, and postponing consideration of the
writings of the last ten years of his life, except for the occasional
illustration of detached points.

When we extend our examination to these later productions, we shall
have, in the main, to reverse our judgment. Instead of recognizing, as
in the Cours de Philosophic Positive, an essentially sound view of
philosophy, with a few capital errors, it is in their general character
that we deem the subsequent speculations false and misleading, while in
the midst of this wrong general tendency, we find a crowd of valuable
thoughts, and suggestions of thought, in detail. For the present we put
out of the question this signal anomaly in M. Comte's intellectual
career. We shall consider only the principal gift which he has left to
the world, his clear, full, and comprehensive exposition, and in part
creation, of what he terms the Positive Philosophy: endeavouring to
sever what in our estimation is true, from the much less which is
erroneous, in that philosophy as he conceived it, and distinguishing, as
we proceed, the part which is specially his, from that which belongs to
the philosophy of the age, and is the common inheritance of thinkers.
This last discrimination has been partially made in a late pamphlet, by
Mr Herbert Spen