The young Comte, now twenty, was enchanted by the philosophic veteran. In after years he so far forgot himself as to write of Saint Simon as a depraved quack, and to deplore his connection with him as purely mischievous. While the connection lasted he thought very differently. Saint Simon is described as the most estimable and lovable of men, and the most delightful in his relations; he is the worthiest of philosophers. Even after the association had come to an end, and at the very moment when Comte was congratulating himself on having thrown off the yoke, he honestly admits that Saint Simon's influence has been of powerful service in his philosophic education. 'I certainly,' he writes to his most intimate friend, 'am under great personal obligations to Saint Simon; that is to say, he helped in a powerful degree to launch me in the philosophical direction that I have now definitely marked out for myself, and that I shall follow without looking back for the rest of my life.' Even if there were no such unmistakable expressions as these, the most cursory glance into Saint Simon's writings is enough to reveal the thread of connection between the ingenious visionary and systematic thinker. We see the debt, and we also see that when it is stated at the highest possible, nothing has really been taken either from Comte's claims as a powerful original thinker, or from his immeasurable pre-eminence over Saint Simon in intellectual grasp and vigour and coherence. As high a degree of originality may be shown in transformation as in invention, as Molière and Shakespeare have proved in the region of dramatic art. In philosophy the conditions are not different. Il faut prendre son bien où on le trouve.
It is no detriment to Comte's fame that some of the ideas which he recombined and incorporated in a great philosophic structure had their origin in ideas that were produced almost at random in the incessant fermentation of Saint Simon's brain. Comte is in no true sense a follower of Saint Simon, but it was undoubtedly Saint Simon who launched him, to take Comte's own word, by suggesting to his strong and penetrating mind the two starting-points of what grew into the Comtist system—first, that political phenomena are as capable of being grouped under laws as other phenomena; and second, that the true destination of philosophy must be social, and the true object of the thinker must be the reorganisation of the moral, religious, and political systems. We can readily see what an impulse these far-reaching conceptions would give to Comte's meditations. There were conceptions of less importance than these, in which it is impossible not to feel that it was Saint Simon's wrong or imperfect idea that put his young admirer on the track to a right and perfected idea. The subject is not worthy of further discussion. 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. Comte tried to find pupils to board with him, but only one pupil came, and he was soon sent away for lack of companions. 'I would rather spend an evening,' wrote the needy enthusiast, 'in solving a difficult question, than in running after some empty-headed and consequential millionaire in search of a pupil.' A little money was earned by an occasional article in Le Producteur, in which he began to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing in his mind. He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was hoped would bring money as well as fame, and which were to be the first dogmatic exposition of the Positive Philosophy. A friend had said to him, 'You talk too freely, your ideas are getting abroad, and other people use them without giving you the credit; put your ownership on record.' The lectures were intended to do this among other things, and they attracted hearers so eminent as Humboldt the cosmologist, as Poinsot the geometer, as Blainville the physiologist.
Unhappily, after the third lecture of the course, Comte had a severe attack of cerebral derangement, brought on by intense and prolonged meditation, acting on a system that was already irritated by the chagrin of domestic failure. He did not recover his health for more than a year, and as soon as convalescence set in he was seized by so profound a melancholy at the disaster which had thus overtaken him, that he threw himself into the Seine. Fortunately he was rescued, and the shock did not stay his return to mental soundness. One incident of this painful episode is worth mentioning. Lamennais, then in the height of his Catholic exaltation, persuaded Comte's mother to insist on her son being married with the religious ceremony, and as the younger Madame Comte apparently did not resist, the rite was duly performed, in spite of the fact that the unfortunate man was at the time neither more nor less than raving mad. To such shocking conspiracies against common sense and decency does ecclesiastical zealotry bring even good men like Lamennais. On the other hand, philosophic assailants of Comtism have not always resisted the temptation to recall the circumstance that its founder was once out of his mind,—an unworthy and irrelevant device, that cannot be excused even by the provocation of Comte's own occasional acerbity. As has been justly said, if Newton once suffered a cerebral attack without on that account forfeiting our veneration for the Principia, Comte may have suffered in the same way, and still not have forfeited our respect for what is good in the systems of Positive Philosophy and Positive Polity.
In 1828 the lectures were renewed, and in 1830 was published the first volume of the Course of Positive Philosophy. The sketch and ground plan of this great undertaking had appeared in 1826. The sixth and last volume was published in 1842. The twelve years covering the publication of the first of Comte's two elaborate works were years of indefatigable toil, and they were the only portion of his life in which he enjoyed a certain measure, and that a very modest measure, of material prosperity. In 1833 he was appointed examiner of the boys in the various provincial schools who aspired to enter the École Polytechnique at Paris. This and two other engagements as a teacher of mathematics secured him an income of some £400 a year. He made M. Guizot, then Louis Philippe's minister, the important proposal to establish a chair of general history of the sciences. If there are four chairs, he argued, devoted to the history of philosophy, that is to say, the minute study of all sorts of dreams and aberrations through the ages, surely there ought to be at least one to explain the formation and progress of our real knowledge? This wise suggestion, which still remains to be acted upon, was at first welcomed, according to Comte's own account, by Guizot's philosophic instinct, and then repulsed by his 'metaphysical rancour.'
Meanwhile Comte did his official work conscientiously, sorely as he grudged the time which it took from the execution of the great object of his thoughts. We cannot forbear to transcribe one delightful and touching trait in connection with this part of Comte's life. 'I hardly know if even to you,' he writes in the expansion of domestic confidence to his wife, 'I dare disclose the sweet and softened feeling that comes over me when I find a young man whose examination is thoroughly satisfactory. Yes, though you may smile, the emotion would easily stir me to tears if I were not carefully on my guard.' Such sympathy with youthful hope; in union with the industry and intelligence that are the only means of bringing the hope to fulfilment, shows that Comte's dry and austere manner veiled the fires of a generous social emotion. It was this which made the overworked student take upon himself the burden of delivering every year from 1831 to 1848 a course of gratuitous lectures on astronomy for a popular audience. The social feeling that inspired this disinterested act showed itself in other ways. He suffered the penalty of imprisonment rather than serve in the national guard; his position was that though he would not take arms against the new monarchy of July, yet being a republican he would take no oath to defend it. The only amusement that Comte permitted himself was a visit to the opera. In his youth he had been a playgoer, but he shortly came to the conclusion that tragedy is a stilted and bombastic art, and after a time comedy interested him no more than tragedy. For the opera he had a genuine passion, which he gratified as often as he could, until his means became too narrow to afford even that single relaxation.
Of his manner and personal appearance we have the following account from one who was his pupil:—'Daily as the clock struck eight on the horologe of the Luxembourg, while the ringing hammer on the bell was yet audible, the door of my room opened, and there entered a man, short, rather stout, almost what one might call sleek, freshly shaven, without vestige of whisker or moustache. He was invariably dressed in a suit of the most spotless black, as if going to a dinner party; his white neckcloth was fresh from the laundress's hands, and his hat shining like a racer's coat. He advanced to the arm-chair prepared for him in the centre of the writing-table, laid his hat on the left-hand corner; his snuff-box was deposited on the same side beside the quire of paper placed in readiness for his use, and dipping the pen twice into the ink-bottle, then bringing it to within an inch of his nose, to make sure it was properly filled, he broke silence: "We have said that the chord AB," etc. For three quarters of an hour he continued his demonstration, making short notes as he went on, to guide the listener in repeating the problem alone; then, taking up another cahier which lay beside him, he went over the written repetition of the former lesson. He explained, corrected, or commented till the clock struck nine; then, with the little finger of the right hand brushing from his coat and waistcoat the shower of superfluous snuff which had fallen on them, he pocketed his snuff-box, and resuming his hat, he as silently as when he came in made his exit by the door which I rushed to open for him.'
In 1842, as we have said, the last volume of the Positive Philosophy was given to the public. Instead of that contentment which we like to picture as the reward of twelve years of meritorious toil devoted to the erection of a high philosophic edifice, the author of this great contribution found himself in the midst of a very sea of small troubles. And they were troubles of that uncompensated kind that harass without elevating, and waste a man's spirit without softening or enlarging it. First, the jar of temperament between Comte and his wife had become so unbearable that they separated (1842). It is not expedient for strangers to attempt to allot blame in such cases, for it is impossible for strangers to know all the deciding circumstances. We need only say that in spite of one or two disadvantageous facts in her career which do not concern the public, Madame Comte seems to have uniformly comported herself towards her husband with an honourable solicitude for his wellbeing. Comte made her an annual allowance, and for some years after the separation they corresponded on friendly terms. Next in the list of the vexations that greeted Comte on emerging from the long tunnel of philosophising was a lawsuit with his publisher. The publisher had impertinently inserted in the sixth volume a protest against a certain foot-note, in which Comte had used some hard words about M. Arago. Comte threw himself into the suit with an energy worthy of Voltaire, and he won it. Third, and worst of all, he had prefixed a preface to the sixth volume, in which he deliberately went out of his way to rouse the active enmity of the very men on whom depended his annual re-election to the post of examiner for the Polytechnic School. The result of this perversity was that by and by he lost the appointment, and with it one half of his very modest income. This was the occasion of an episode, which is of more than merely personal interest.
Before 1842 Comte had been in correspondence with our distinguished countryman, J. S. Mill. Mr. Mill had been greatly impressed by Comte's philosophic ideas; he admits that his own System of Logic owes many valuable thoughts to Comte, and that, in the portion of that work which treats of the logic of the moral sciences, a radical improvement in the conceptions of logical method was derived from the Positive Philosophy. Their correspondence, which was extremely full and copious, and which we may hope will one day be made accessible to the public, turned principally upon the two great questions of the equality between men and women, and of the expediency and constitution of a sacerdotal or spiritual order. When Comte found himself straitened, he confided the entire circumstances to his English friend. As might be supposed by those who know the affectionate anxiety with which Mr. Mill regarded the welfare of any one whom he believed to be doing good work in the world, he at once took pains to have Comte's loss of income made up to him, until Comte should have had time to repair that loss by his own endeavour. Mr. Mill persuaded Grote, Molesworth, and Raikes Currie to advance the sum of £240. At the end of the year (that is in 1845) Comte had taken no steps to enable himself to dispense with the aid of the three Englishmen. Mr. Mill applied to them again, but with the exception of Grote, who sent a small sum, they gave Comte to understand that they expected him to earn his own living. Mr. Mill had suggested to Comte that he should write articles for the English periodicals, and expressed his own willingness to translate any such articles from the French. Comte at first fell in with the plan, but he speedily surprised and disconcerted Mr. Mill by boldly taking up the position of 'high moral magistrate,' and accusing the three defaulting contributors of a scandalous falling away from righteousness and a high mind. Mr. Mill was chilled by these pretensions; they struck him as savouring of a totally unexpected charlatanry; and the correspondence came to an end. For Comte's position in the argument one feels that there is much to be said. If you have good reason for believing that a given thinker is doing work that will destroy the official system of science or philosophy, and if you desire its destruction, then you may fairly be asked to help to provide for him the same kind of material freedom that is secured to the professors and propagators of the official system by the state or by the universities. And if it is a fine thing for a man to leave money behind him in the shape of an endowment for the support of a scientific teacher of whom he has never heard, why should it not be just as natural and as laudable to give money, while he is yet alive, to a teacher whom he both knows and approves of? On the other hand, Grote and Molesworth might say that, for anything they could tell, they would find themselves to be helping the construction of a system of which they utterly disapproved. And, as things turned out, they would have been perfectly justified in this serious apprehension. To have done anything to make the production of the Positive Polity easier would have been no ground for anything but remorse to any of the three. It is just to Comte to remark that he always assumed that the contributors to the support of a thinker should be in all essentials of method and doctrine that thinker's disciples; aid from indifferent persons he counted irrational and humiliating. But is an endowment ever a blessing to the man who receives it? The question is difficult to answer generally; in Comte's case there is reason in the doubts felt by Madame Comte as to the expediency of relieving the philosopher from the necessity of being in plain and business-like relations with indifferent persons for a certain number of hours in the week. Such relations do as much as a doctrine to keep egoism within decent bounds, and they must be not only a relief, but a wholesome corrective to the tendencies of concentrated thinking on abstract subjects.