anied by a
careful running analysis and explanatory summary of contents,
which make the work more readily intelligible than the
original. For criticisms, the reader may be referred to Mr.
Mill's _Auguste Comte and Positivism_; Dr. Bridges's reply to
Mr. Mill, _The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrines_ (1866);
Mr. Herbert Spencer's essay on the Genesis of Science, and
pamphlet on _The Classification of the Sciences_; Professor
Huxley's 'Scientific Aspects of Positivism,' in his _Lay
Sermons_; Dr. Congreve's _Essays Political, Social, and
Religious_ (1874); Mr. Fiske's _Outlines of Cosmic
Philosophy_ (1874); Mr. Lewes's _History of Philosophy_, vol.
ii.

In 1826 this was pushed further in a most remarkable piece called
_Considerations on the Spiritual Power_--the main object of which is
to demonstrate the necessity of instituting a spiritual power,
distinct from the temporal power and independent of it. In examining
the conditions of a spiritual power proper for modern times, he
indicates in so many terms the presence in his mind of a direct
analogy between his proposed spiritual power and the functions of the
Catholic clergy at the time of its greatest vigour and most complete
independence,--that is to say, from about the middle of the eleventh
century until towards the end of the thirteenth. He refers to De
Maistre's memorable book, _Du Pape_, as the most profound, accurate,
and methodical account of the old spiritual organisation, and starts
from that as the model to be adapted to the changed intellectual and
social conditions of the modern time. In the _Positive Philosophy_,
again (vol. v. p. 344), he distinctly says that Catholicism,
reconstituted as a system on new intellectual foundations, would
finally preside over the spiritual reorganisation of modern society.
Much else could easily be quoted to the same effect. If unity of
career, then, means that Comte from the beginning designed the
institution of a spiritual power and the systematic reorganisation of
life, it is difficult to deny him whatever credit that unity may be
worth, and the credit is perhaps not particularly great. Even the
re-adaptation of the Catholic system to a scientific doctrine was
plainly in his mind thirty years before the final execution of the
_Positive Polity_, though it is difficult to believe that he foresaw
the religious mysticism in which