That Comte would have
performed some great intellectual achievement, if Saint Simon had
never been born, is certain. It is hardly less certain that the great
achievement which he did actually perform was originally set in motion
by Saint Simon's conversation, though it was afterwards directly
filiated with the fertile speculations of Turgot and Condorcet. Comte
thought almost as meanly of Plato as he did of Saint Simon, and he
considered Aristotle the prince of all true thinkers; yet their vital
difference about Ideas did not prevent Aristotle from calling Plato
master.

After six years the differences between the old and the young
philosopher grew too marked for friendship. Comte began to fret under
Saint Simon's pretensions to be his director. Saint Simon, on the
other hand, perhaps began to feel uncomfortably conscious of the
superiority of his disciple. The occasion of the breach between them
(1824) was an attempt on Saint Simon's part to print a production of
Comte's as if it were in some sort connected with Saint Simon's
schemes of social reorganisation. Comte was never a man to quarrel by
halves, and not only was the breach not repaired, but long afterwards
Comte, as we have said, with painful ungraciousness took to calling
the encourager of his youth by very hard names.

In 1825 Comte married. His marriage was one of those of which
'magnanimity owes no account to prudence,' and it did not turn out
prosperously. His family were strongly Catholic and royalist, and they
were outraged by his refusal to have the marriage performed other than
civilly. They consented, however, to receive his wife, and the pair
went on a visit to Montpellier. Madame Comte conceived a dislike to
the circle she found there, and this was the too early beginning of
disputes which lasted for the remainder of their union. In the year of
his marriage we find Comte writing to the most intimate of his
correspondents:--'I have nothing left but to concentrate my whole
moral existence in my intellectual work, a precious but inadequate
compensation; and so I must give up, if not the most dazzling, still
the sweetest part of my happiness.' We cannot help admiring the
heroism which cherishes great ideas in the midst of petty miseries,
and intrepidly throws all squalid interruptions into the background
which is their true place. Still, we may well suppose that the sordid
cares that come with want of money made a harmonious life none the
more easy. C