nce of the personal ascendancy he exercised over those who
approached him; an ascendancy which for a time carried away even M.
Littre, as he confesses, to a length which his calmer judgment does not
now approve.

These various writings raise many points of interest regarding M.
Comte's personal history, and some, not without philosophic bearings,
respecting his mental habits: from all which matters we shall abstain,
with the exception of two, which he himself proclaimed with great
emphasis, and a knowledge of which is almost indispensable to an
apprehension of the characteristic difference between his second career
and his first. It should be known that during his later life, and even
before completing his first great treatise, M. Comte adopted a rule, to
which he very rarely made any exception: to abstain systematically, not
only from newspapers or periodical publications, even scientific, but
from all reading whatever, except a few favourite poets in the ancient
and modern European languages. This abstinence he practised for the sake
of mental health; by way, as he said, of "_hygiene cerebrale_." We are
far from thinking that the practice has nothing whatever to recommend
it. For most thinkers, doubtless, it would be a very unwise one; but we
will not affirm that it may not sometimes be advantageous to a mind of
the peculiar quality of M. Comte's--one that can usefully devote itself
to following out to the remotest developments a particular line of
meditations, of so arduous a kind that the complete concentration of the
intellect upon its own thoughts is almost a necessary condition of
success. When a mind of this character has laboriously and
conscientiously laid in beforehand, as M. Comte had done, an ample stock
of materials, he may be justified in thinking that he will contribute
most to the mental wealth of mankind by occupying himself solely in
working upon these, without distracting his attention by continually
taking in more matter, or keeping a communication open with other
independent intellects. The practice, therefore, may be legitimate; but
no one should adopt it without being aware of what he loses by it. He
must resign the pretension of arriving at the whole truth on the
subject, whatever it be, of his meditations. That he should effect this,
even on a narrow subject, by the mere force of his own mind, building on
the foundations of his predecessors, without aid or correction from his
contemporaries, is