best to
think of him only as the intellectual worker, pursuing in uncomforted
obscurity the laborious and absorbing task to which he had given up
his whole life. His singularly conscientious fashion of elaborating
his ideas made the mental strain more intense than even so exhausting
a work as the abstract exposition of the principles of positive
science need have been, if he had followed a more self-indulgent plan.
He did not write down a word until he had first composed the whole
matter in his mind. When he had thoroughly meditated every sentence,
he sat down to write, and then, such was the grip of his memory, the
exact order of his thoughts came back to him as if without an effort,
and he wrote down precisely what he had intended to write, without the
aid of a note or a memorandum, and without check or pause. For
example, he began and completed in about six weeks a chapter in the
_Positive Philosophy_ (vol. v. ch. lv.), which would fill forty of the
large pages of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Even if his subject had
been merely narrative or descriptive, this would be a very
satisfactory piece of continuous production. When we reflect that the
chapter in question is not narrative, but an abstract exposition of
the guiding principles of the movements of several centuries, with
many threads of complex thought running along side by side all
through the speculation, then the circumstances under which it was
reduced to literary form are really astonishing. It is hardly possible
for a critic to share the admiration expressed by some of Comte's
disciples for his style. We are not so unreasonable as to blame him
for failing to make his pages picturesque or thrilling; we do not want
sunsets and stars and roses and ecstasy; but there is a certain
standard for the most serious and abstract subjects. When compared
with such philosophic writing as Hume's, Diderot's, Berkeley's, then
Comte's manner is heavy, laboured, monotonous, without relief and
without light. There is now and then an energetic phrase, but as a
whole the vocabulary is jejune; the sentences are overloaded; the
pitch is flat. A scrupulous insistence on making his meaning clear led
to an iteration of certain adjectives and adverbs, which at length
deaden the effect beyond the endurance of all but the most resolute
students. Only the profound and stimulating interest of much of the
matter prevents one from thinking of Rivarol's ill-natured remark upon
Condorcet,