rests. It is impossible not to be impressed by the
grandeur of his conception, and the consuming energy with which he
addressed himself to its realisation. He seems to recall to us
Browning's Paracelsus, whose "vast longings" urged him forward to some
surpassing achievement, to some heroic attempt

To save mankind,
To make some unexampled sacrifice
In their behalf, to wring some wonderous good
From heaven or earth for them.

When a young man of only twenty-four years, he had already published
his first work, entitled _A Plan of Scientific Works necessary to
reorganise Society_, thus striking the keynote of his career. We can
feel nothing but the strongest admiration for the man who from the
first determines to subordinate knowledge, life and love, to the
service of the human race. It was Comte's incessant teaching that the
sciences were to be cultivated, not as ends in themselves, but as means
whereby to further human welfare. He would have the astronomer and
physiologist pursue their tasks, not merely for the sake of acquiring
knowledge, for the gratification of the curiosity to know, but for the
betterment of man's lot. And for the same reason he insisted on the
pre-eminence of the sympathetic affections over the intellect. The
reason, he declared, must ever be the servant, _though not the slave_,
of the emotions. Altruism, or the service of others (a word of his own
coining), must be made to prevail over egoism or selfishness. There
could not be a nobler conception of human duty.

What was the source of the miseries which had driven the people of
France to rebellion but the selfishness of absolute monarchs, of
dissolute nobles who ground their dependants to the dust of
destitution, and of a corrupt hierarchy of clergymen contemptuous of
the people, hypocritical in their conduct, and slaves of the crown? An
astounding revelation that elementary religion should be preached again
in France by a layman who had turned his back in disappointment on all
that priests and the past represented!

And what is the source of the degradation of our own cities but this
same curse of selfishness which is ready to march to opulence and
luxury over the bodies of the starved and poisoned toilers of our towns
and factories, and thinks it can justify its barbarity by an off-hand
reference to Political Economy and its irrefragable laws? "Supply and
demand"--sacrosanct enactments of man's brains--how shall