to the public. Instead of that contentment which we like to
picture as the reward of twelve years of meritorious toil devoted to
the erection of a high philosophic edifice, the author of this great
contribution found himself in the midst of a very sea of small
troubles. And they were troubles of that uncompensated kind that
harass without elevating, and waste a man's spirit without softening
or enlarging it. First, the jar of temperament between Comte and his
wife had become so unbearable that they separated (1842). It is not
expedient for strangers to attempt to allot blame in such cases, for
it is impossible for strangers to know all the deciding circumstances.
We need only say that in spite of one or two disadvantageous facts in
her career which do not concern the public, Madame Comte seems to have
uniformly comported herself towards her husband with an honourable
solicitude for his wellbeing. Comte made her an annual allowance, and
for some years after the separation they corresponded on friendly
terms. Next in the list of the vexations that greeted Comte on
emerging from the long tunnel of philosophising was a lawsuit with his
publisher. The publisher had impertinently inserted in the sixth
volume a protest against a certain foot-note, in which Comte had used
some hard words about M. Arago. Comte threw himself into the suit with
an energy worthy of Voltaire, and he won it. Third, and worst of all,
he had prefixed a preface to the sixth volume, in which he
deliberately went out of his way to rouse the active enmity of the
very men on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of
examiner for the Polytechnic School. The result of this perversity was
that by and by he lost the appointment, and with it one half of his
very modest income. This was the occasion of an episode, which is of
more than merely personal interest.

Before 1842 Comte had been in correspondence with our distinguished
countryman, J. S. Mill. Mr. Mill had been greatly impressed by Comte's
philosophic ideas; he admits that his own _System of Logic_ owes many
valuable thoughts to Comte, and that, in the portion of that work
which treats of the logic of the moral sciences, a radical improvement
in the conceptions of logical method was derived from the _Positive
Philosophy_. Their correspondence, which was extremely full and
copious, and which we may hope will one day be made accessible to the
public, turned principally upon the two great question