directly with Montesquieu, directly with Turgot, and more
closely than either with Condorcet, of whom he was accustomed to speak
as his philosophic father.

[1] Reprinted by the kind permission of Messrs. A. and C. Black
from the new edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

Isidore-Auguste-Marie-Francois-Xavier Comte was born in January 1798,
at Montpellier, where his father was a receiver-general of taxes for
the district. He was sent for his earliest instruction to the school
of the town, and in 1814 was admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique. His
youth was marked by a constant willingness to rebel against merely
official authority; to genuine excellence, whether moral or
intellectual, he was always ready to pay unbounded deference. That
strenuous application which was one of his most remarkable gifts in
manhood showed itself in his youth, and his application was backed or
inspired by superior intelligence and aptness. After he had been two
years at the Ecole Polytechnique he took a foremost part in a mutinous
demonstration against one of the masters; the school was broken up,
and Comte like the other scholars was sent home. To the great
dissatisfaction of his parents, he resolved to return to Paris (1816),
and to earn his living there by giving lessons in mathematics.
Benjamin Franklin was the youth's idol at this moment. 'I seek to
imitate the modern Socrates,' he wrote to a school friend, 'not in
talents, but in way of living. You know that at five and twenty he
formed the design of becoming perfectly wise, and that he fulfilled
his design. I have dared to undertake the same thing, though I am not
yet twenty.' Though Comte's character and aims were as far removed as
possible from Franklin's type, neither Franklin nor any man that ever
lived could surpass him in the heroic tenacity with which, in the face
of a thousand obstacles, he pursued his own ideal of a vocation.

For a moment circumstances led him to think of seeking a career in
America, but a friend who preceded him thither warned him of the
purely practical spirit that prevailed in the new country. 'If
Lagrange were to come to the United States, he could only earn his
livelihood by turning land surveyor.' So Comte remained in Paris,
living as he best could on something less than L80 a year, and hoping,
when he took the trouble to break his meditations upon greater things
by hopes about himself, that he might by and by obtain an appointment
as