been so harmoniously combined
for the creation of something that should be durable and of real value.
For one cannot doubt the madness of Auguste Comte. It was manifested
in public on the 12th of April, 1826, and interrupted the success of
his lectures, which had attracted all the leading minds of the time,
including Humboldt himself. After a violent attack of mania, the
founder of the philosophy of Positivism took refuge at Montmorency.
From there he was with difficulty brought back to Paris and placed
under the care of the celebrated alienist, Esquirol. He was released
when only partially cured, and at the instigation of his mother
consented to go through a religious marriage ceremony with Madame
Comte, after which he signed the official register _Brutus Bonaparte
Comte_! The following year he threw himself into the Seine, but was
miraculously saved, and, gradually recovering his strength, he
recommenced his courses of lectures, which aroused the greatest
interest both in France and abroad.

The Positivist leader had always shown signs of morbid megalomania.
His early works are sufficient to prove that he was the prey to an
excessive form of pride, for he writes like a Messiah consciously
treading the path that leads to a martyr's crown. His private troubles
aggravated the malady, and the escapades of his wife, who frequently
left his house to rejoin her old associates, were the cause of violent
attacks of frenzy.

Later the philosopher himself was seized by an overwhelming passion for
Clotilde de Vaux, a writer of pretensions who was, in reality,
distinguished neither by talent nor beauty. The feeling that she
inspired in him has no parallel in the annals of modern love-affairs.
After some years, however, she died of consumption, and the germ of
madness in Comte, which had been lying latent, again showed itself,
this time in the form of a passionate religious mysticism. His dead
mistress became transformed, for him, into a divinity, and he looked
upon everything that she had used or touched as sacred, shutting
himself up in the midst of the furniture and utensils that had
surrounded her during her life-time. Three times a day he prostrated
himself, and offered up fervent prayers to the spirit of Clotilde, and
he often visited her grave, or sat, wrapped in meditation, in the
church that she had frequented. He sought to evoke her image, and held
long conversations with it, and it was under her influence that