picture to have much chance of
making converts rapidly, and the objections to the scheme are too
obvious to need stating. Indeed, it is only thoughtful persons to whom
it will be credible, that speculations leading to this result can
deserve the attention necessary for understanding them. We propose in
the next Essay to examine them as part of the elaborate and coherent
system of doctrine, which M. Comte afterwards put together for the
reconstruction of society. Meanwhile the reader will gather, from what
has been said, that M. Comte has not, in our opinion, created Sociology.
Except his analysis of history, to which there is much to be added, but
which we do not think likely to be ever, in its general features,
superseded, he has done nothing in Sociology which does not require to
be done over again, and better. Nevertheless, he has greatly advanced
the study. Besides the great stores of thought, of various and often of
eminent merit, with which he has enriched the subject, his conception of
its method is so much truer and more profound than that of any one who
preceded him, as to constitute an era in its cultivation. If it cannot
be said of him that he has created a science, it may be said truly that
he has, for the first time, made the creation possible. This is a great
achievement, and, with the extraordinary merit of his historical
analysis, and of his philosophy of the physical sciences, is enough to
immortalize his name. But his renown with posterity would probably have
been greater than it is now likely to be, if after showing the way in
which the social science should be formed, he had not flattered himself
that he had formed it, and that it was already sufficiently solid for
attempting to build upon its foundation the entire fabric of the
Political Art.

* * * * *

PART II.

THE LATER SPECULATIONS OF M. COMTE.[22]

The appended list of publications contain the materials for knowing and
estimating what M. Comte termed his second career, in which the
_savant_, historian, and philosopher of his fundamental treatise, came
forth transfigured as the High Priest of the Religion of Humanity. They
include all his writings except the Cours de Philosophic Positive: for
his early productions, and the occasional publications of his later life,
are reprinted as Preludes or Appendices to the treatises here enumerated,
or in Dr Robinet's volume, which, as well as that of M. Littre,