As a youth Comte demanded the resignation of one of his instructors, criticized Napoleon, and disregarded both ecclesiastical and parental authority. He especially enjoyed to point out the stupidity of his superiors and to oppose tyranny.
At the age of nineteen Comte made the acquaintance of Saint Simon, the well-known socialist. The friendship lasted for only a few years, but long enough to exert a deep influence upon the youthful mathematician. Saint Simon (1760–1825) had indicated the need for a scientific classification of the sciences with political science at the head of the list, and had developed a new fraternalism under the name of Le nouveau Christianisme. This system was optimistic and humanitarian, but dreamy. Comte was dissatisfied with it, and undertook to work out a better scheme of social analysis and organization.
In 1822, Comte’s first important work was published. It contained an introduction by Saint Simon, and was entitled A Prospectus of the Scientific Works Required for the Reorganization of Society. It represented an important beginning of the task on which Comte was to spend his life. Upon the problem Comte read and worked assiduously, save as he was interrupted by an unhappy married life and by mental aberrations, due to overwork. He gave courses of public lectures, but insisted upon working gratuituously. He would not accept royalties from the sale of his books, despite the fact that he lived continually on the verge of starvation. His friends, however, made him gifts and established a subsidy. He insisted upon the rule that all his literary productions should be given to the public gratuitously.[XIII-1]
His method of composition has been commented upon by his biographers. As a result of his unusual memory and the high degree of mental concentration to which he attained, he was able to plan chapters and volumes in their smallest details, and then from memory to put them into written form. This method enabled him to secure “an extraordinary unity of conception and organic symmetry of plan.”
Comte manifested an unusual regard for the truth. This attitude required him to modify and qualify statements of fundamental principles at great length. As a result his works are often tedious reading. He preferred, however, to write meticulously and thus to safeguard truth, rather than speak in epigrams and sacrifice truth.
Comte’s two leading works are: the Positive Philosophy and the Positive Polity. The first appeared in six volumes during the years from 1830 to 1842. The second work, in four volumes, was published in the years from 1851 to 1854. It is not the equal of the Positive Philosophy, which was translated into English in 1853 by Harriet Martineau.
John Stuart Mill has referred to Comte as among the first of European thinkers; and, by his institution of a new social science, in some respects the first.[XIII-2] George Henry Lewes called Comte the greatest of modern thinkers. John Morley, the English statesman and author, says of Comte: “Neither Franklin, nor any man that has 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.” Harriet Martineau summarizes his methods as follows: “There can be no question but that his whole career was one of the most intense concentration of mind, gigantic industry, rigid economy, and singular punctuality and exactness in all his habits.”[XIII-3]
In laying the foundations for a new social science, Comte began with an analysis of types of thinking. (1) Primitive and untrained persons everywhere think in supernatural terms. They suppose that all physical phenomena are caused by the immediate action of capricious supernatural beings. The primitive man believes in all kinds of fetishes in which spirits or supernatural beings live. Fetishism admitted of no priesthood, because its gods are individual, each residing in fixed objects.[XIII-4]
As the mind of primitive man became better organized, fetishism became cumbersome. Too many fetishes produced mental confusion. A coalescence of gods resulted and polytheism arose. The polytheistic gods represented different phases of life. This state in human thought is well illustrated by the Homeric gods.
But a large number of capricious divinities are mentally unsatisfactory. They create mental contradictions. Consequently, the gods are arranged in a hierarchy. Finally, the idea of one God, or of monotheism, developed. The belief arose that every phenomenon is produced by the immediate action of the one God. As man’s vision widened and his observations increased in scope and depth, the concept of a monotheistic universe became clarified. Monotheism is the climax of the theological stage of thinking.