In the later stages of his illness, after a day of fearful struggle for life, on returning to consciousness, he asked: "What of yesterday?" On being told how near he had been to death, he exclaimed: "Is it possible that I have been so near the realization of my hopes!" Again, he said, in great feebleness: “I cannot easily command my thoughts, but I can slowly hum over these stanzas:

'We would see Jesus-for the shadows lengthen
Across this little landscape of our life;

We would see Jesus, our weak faith to strengthen
For the last weariness-the final strife.

We would see Jesus-the great Rock Foundation
Whereon our feet were set by sovereign grace;
Not life nor death, with all their agitation

Can thence remove us, if we see his face.""

This prayer we believe has been fulfilled,—that he has seen the Redeemer whom he confessed and in whom he hoped, and been made completely like him by seeing him as he is;that he has left behind whatever of evil or infirmity remained, and been introduced into what he described toward the last in these slowly uttered words: "Salvation-forever-foreverforever;" adding also, "Christ-everlasting-sure."

As we follow him in our triumphant thoughts to the begin. nings of that eternal life, we cannot wholly forget the irreparable loss which his family, his friends, this college, and the fraternity of American scholars have sustained. The loss is indeed irreparable. None can feel this more sensitively and bitterly than myself, in the manifold responsibilities to which I have been called. I speak for my colleagues as well, who feel as keenly that one of the wisest and kindest of our circle has been taken from the sphere of activity which we had hoped he might fill for a score of years. It will be long before we forget him or cease to remember him with tender and reverent affection. He has been with us for more than thirty years as a student and instructor. His is one of the brightest names among all those which this College has enrolled upon its annals. May his example and spirit remain with us for another generation!

ARTICLE III-AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM.

Cours de Philosophie Positive. Par AUGUSTE COMTE, Répétiteur d'Analyse transcendante et de Mécanique rationelle à l'École polytechnique, et Examinateur des Candidats qui se dertinent à cette École, Deuxièine Édition, Augmentée d'une Préface, par É. Littié, et d'une Table alphabetique des Matières. Paris J. B. Baillière et Fils. 1864. (Six volumes.)

Système de Politique Positive. Par AUGUSTE COMTE, Auteur du Système de Philosophie Positive. Ordre et Progrès. Paris: Chez Carilian-Goeury et Vor. Dalmont. 1851, 1852, and 1853. (Three volumes published in successive years.)

INTRODUCTORY.

AFTER all that has been written, and ably written, on the subject of the Positive Philosophy, it may seem superfluous to add another attempt to weigh and estimate that remarkable system of thought. But it has seemed to the writer, that, with all that has been done in this line of effort, there is still room for another effort to present the main outlines of this system in its bearing on the questions now at issue between science and religion.

Without presuming to criticize the labors of others, it is sufficient to say that it is the aim of the writer, in this effort, to present such a view of positivism in its scientific, moral, and religious bearings, as shall bring the subject within the scope of the general reader, and enable him to judge intelligently the various questions which rise for decision in the conflict of opinion growing out of the writings of Comte.

But some notice of the life of the author, and of the aims which gave direction to his thinking, and shape to his system of philosophy, is essential to a clear understanding of his published works. Fortunately all that is important under this head may be gleaned from the prefaces and foot-notes of the several volumes of the Philosophie Positive and the Politique Positive.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF M. COMTE.

Auguste Comte, the author of the System of Positive Philosophy, was a native of the south of France, born in the year 1797. He informs us that he was descended "from a family eminently catholic and monarchical,-trained, moreover, in one of those schools in which Bonaparte was vainly trying to restore, at great expense, the ancient mental preponderance of the theologico-metaphysical régime."

But the conservative associations of the youthful Comte did not prevent him from being deeply stirred by the revolutionary events and ideas that crowd the annals of those troublous times. Accordingly he tells us, that, while he had scarcely attained his fourteenth year, he had "passed through all the essential grades of the revolutionary spirit of the period, and already felt the fundamental need of a universal regeneration at once political and philosophical."

In this state of mind M. Comte entered the Polytechnic School in Paris, where he graduated with distinction in 1816. With his mind full of the problems of social and political reform, he sought to discover some relation between his mathematical and scientific studies and the ever-present questions which were always uppermost in his mind. Accordingly, while he was a student in this celebrated institution, and before the age of nineteen, he had come to conceive of social phenomena as governed by invariable natural laws, no less than the phenomena of inert matter, and had formed the purpose of applying the methods of the exact sciences to the investigation of the great questions of society and government. If he entered the Polytechnic School already convinced of the necessity of a universal, political, and philosophical regeneration of society, when he left the institution he had definitively accepted for himself the task of working that regeneration, and had consecrated himself to it as the labor of his life.

It seems that the young philosopher, at the outset, looked to our country as the theater of the great mission to which he felt himself called. In a letter, dated February, 1852, he tells us that "on leaving the Polytechnic School in 1816, he was on the point of transplanting to the United States his rising philosoph

ical mission, under the worthy patronage of the good General Bernard and indirectly under that of the noble President Munroe." He does not give his reasons for the abandonment of this early plan. The result was that he decided to remain in Paris, and to fight the battle of his life there; and a battle truly it was, as he saw it in anticipation and as he found in experience.

Having decided to remain in Paris, he found himself confronted by the necessity of a two-fold struggle for existence. He was without fortune and must earn his own support, while trying to perform his accepted task-that of revolutionizing the thought of his own age and of all succeeding ages. It will be convenient to notice first some incidents connected with his plans and efforts to provide for his own personal subsistence before passing on to notice the far greater struggle, to which the first was only subordinate and subservient.

To provide for his own support he chose the employment of teacher of mathematics, an occupation for which he was eminently fitted by taste and previous culture. But the path which he had chosen was beset with difficulties. The restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of France had taken place shortly before the young student had completed his course at the Polytechnic School. With the incoming of the old dynasty came back the ascendency of the church in the control of public education. Under such control there was no place for free thinkers in connection with the system of national education. The ruling powers would tolerate in the chairs of public instruction none but loyal sons of the church. While the mathemat ical abilities and attainments of M. Comte were such as would, in other circumstances, have early secured for him a chair of instruction in some of the higher public institutions of France, the proscriptive policy, which had become ascendant in the control of education, cut him off from all hope of employment in that direction. He was thus shut up to the necessity of giving private instruction as his only means of support. This was his sole reliance for personal subsistence during the first sixteen years after his graduation.

In 1832, after the accession of Louis Phillipe to the throne of France, he was appointed to a subordinate position as teacher

of mathematics in the Polytechnic School, an appointment which he believed he would have received in 1816, had he not been shut out of every path of preferment in the system of public instruction. Five years later he was appointed examiner of candidates aspiring to enter the Polytechnic School. This double service was so moderately compensated, that he was obliged, in order to meet the necessities of his position, to take upon himself the additional labor of daily instruction in a preparatory institution designed to fit students to enter the Polytechnic School.

Thus, after a struggle of twenty-one years, he was at length wholly relieved of the painful necessity of giving private and individual lessons as a means of support, and was able to command more time for the philosophical labors which constituted the main work of his life. Speaking in 1842 of his labors as a teacher, he says, "Up to a very recent period my existence has always depended on a labor of daily instruction ordinarily prolonged to six or eight hours."

During this painful struggle to maintain a mere physical existence, while elaborating the system of the Positive Philosophy, the author gives us plainly to understand that the diffi culties of his position were greatly aggravated by the hostile influences with which he was surrounded. He divides the learned public before whom he must act his part as a revolutionist in the domain of philosophy into three schools of thought, the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. To each of these schools he attributes a share of responsibility in causing the embarrassments under which he labored during the whole of his philosophical career.

To the theological party he ascribes the exclusion of himself and others, suspected of disloyalty to the church, from all the paths of preferment in the system of public instruction. He speaks of an influence emanating from this party which led to a disbandment at the Polytechnic School in 1816, which brought disaster or embarrassment to many persons connected with that institution. And when, some years later, the proscriptive policy was mitigated in favor of some of M. Comte's associates, he tells us how he was personally excepted from any share in this partial toleration.