o express my
own sense of Hume's merits with the modesty which becomes a writer who
has no authority in matters of philosophy, I had affirmed that no one
had properly appreciated him, Mr. Congreve's remarks would apply: but as
I did neither of these things, they appear to me to be irrelevant, if
not unjustifiable. And even had it occurred to me to quote M. Comte's
expressions about Hume, I do not know that I should have cited them,
inasmuch as, on his own showing, M. Comte occasionally speaks very
decidedly touching writers of whose works he has not read a line. Thus,
in Tome VI. of the "Philosophie Positive," p. 619, M. Comte writes: "Le
plus grand des metaphysiciens modernes, l'illustre Kant, a noblement
merite une eternelle admiration en tentant, le premier, d'echapper
directement a l'absolu philosophique par sa celebre conception de la
double realite, a la fois objective et subjective, qui indique un si
juste sentiment de la saine philosophie."

But in the "Preface Personnelle" in the same volume, p. 35, M. Comte
tells us:--"Je n'ai jamais lu, en aucune langue, ni Vico, _ni Kant_, ni
Herder, ni Hegel, &c.; je ne connais leurs divers ouvrages que d'apres
quelques relations indirectes et certains extraits fort insuffisants."

Who knows but that the "&c." may include Hume? And in that case what is
the value of M. Comte's praise of him?

[14] Now and always I quote the second edition, by Littre.

[15] "Philosophie Positive," ii. p. 440.

[16] "Le brillant mais superficiel Cuvier."--_Philosophie Positive_, vi.
p. 383.

[17] "Philosophie Positive," iii. p. 369.

[18] Ibid. p. 387.

[19] Hear the late Dr. Whewell, who calls Comte "a shallow pretender,"
so far as all the modern sciences, except astronomy, are concerned; and
tells us that "his pretensions to discoveries are, as Sir John Herschel
has shown, absurdly fallacious."--"Comte and Positivism," _Macmillan's
Magazine_, March 1866.

[20] "Philosophie Positive," i. pp. 8, 9.

[21] "Philosophie Positive," iii. p. 188.

[22] The word "positive" is in every way objectionable. In one sense it
suggests that mental quality which was undoubtedly largely developed in
M. Comte, but can best be dispensed with in a philosopher; in another,
it is unfortunate in its application to a system which starts with
enormous negations; in its third, and specially philosophical sense, as
implying a system of thought which assumes nothing beyond the content of
observed facts, it