eme of Public
Criticism, a plan society at large will adopt when it puts off
swaddling-clothes. Public Criticism is a diversion of gossip into a
scientific channel. It is a plan of healthful, hygienic, social
plumbing.

England produced one group of thinkers that changed the complexion of
the theological belief of Christendom--Darwin, Spencer, Wallace, Huxley
and Mill. But this group built on the French philosophers, who were
taught antithetically by the decaying and crumbling aristocracy of
France. Rousseau and Voltaire loved each other and helped each other, as
the proud Leonardo helped the humble and no less proud peasant,
Michelangelo--by absent treatment.

Victor Hugo says that when the skulls of Voltaire and Rousseau were
taken in a sack from the Pantheon and tumbled into a common grave, a
spark of recognition was emitted that the gravedigger did not see.

Voltaire was patronized by Frederick the Great, who, though a married
man, lived a bachelor life and forbade women his court, and protected
Kant with the bulging forehead and independent ways. Kant lived among a
group of thinkers he never saw, but reached out and touched finger-tips
with them over the miles that his feet never traversed.

To Kant are we indebted for Turgot, that practical and farseeing man of
affairs told of in matchless phrase in Thomas Watson's "Story of
France," the best book ever written in America, with possibly a few
exceptions. Condorcet kept step with him, and Auguste Comte calls
Condorcet his spiritual stepfather, and a wit of the time here said,
"Then Turgot is your uncle"; and Comte replied, "I am proud of the
honor, for if Turgot is my uncle, then indeed am I of royal blood."

Auguste Comte is the one bright particular star amid that milky way of
riotous thinkers which followed close upon the destruction of the French
Monarchy.

When Napoleon visited the grave of Rousseau, he mused in silence and
then said, "Perhaps it might have been as well if this man had never
lived."

And Marshal Ney, standing near, said, "It reveals small gratitude for
Napoleon Bonaparte to say so." Napoleon smiled and answered, "Possibly
the world would be as well off if neither of us had ever lived."

Auguste Comte thought that Napoleon was just as necessary in the social
evolution as Rousseau, and that both were needed--and he himself was
needed to make the matter plain in print.

* * * * *

Auguste Comte was born