e
was that the supremacy of geometry coincided with the opening of the
great era of political discussion. The definitions of Montesquieu's
famous book, which opened the political movement in literature, have
been shown to be less those of a jurisconsult than of a geometer.[211]
Social truths, with all their profound complexity, were handled like
propositions in Euclid, and logical deductions from arbitrary premises
were treated as accurate representations of real circumstance. The
repulse of geometry to its proper rank came too late.

[210] Comte's _System of Positive Polity_, i. 380, etc. English
translation, 1875.

[211] By F. Sclopis, quoted in M. Vian's _Hist. de Montesquieu_, p.
51.

Comte always liberally recognised Diderot's genius, and any reader of
Comte's views on the necessities of subjective synthesis will discern
the germ of that doctrine in the following remarkable section:

"When we compare the infinite multitude of the phenomena of nature
with the limits of our understandings and the weakness of our
organs, can we ever expect anything else from the slowness of our
work, from the long and frequent interruptions, and from the rarity
of creative genius than a few broken and separated pieces of the
great chain that binds all things together? Experimental philosophy
might work for centuries of centuries, and the materials that it
had heaped up, finally reaching in their number beyond all
combination, would still be far removed from an exact enumeration.
How many volumes would it not need to contain the mere terms by
which we should designate the distinct collections of phenomena, if
the phenomena were known? When will the philosophic language be
complete? If it were complete, who among men would be able to know
it? If the Eternal, to manifest his power still more plainly than
by the marvels of nature, had deigned to develop the universal
mechanism on pages traced by his own hand, do you suppose that this
great book would be more comprehensible to us than the universe
itself? How many pages of it all would have been intelligible to
the philosopher who, with all the force of head that had been
conferred upon him, was not sure of having grasped all the
conclusions by which an old geometer determined the relation of the
sphere to the cylinder? We should have in such pages a fairly good