Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/775

 ." Comte's volumes struck him at once as a good topic; and he wrote an article on them in the August number for 1838. Any one knowing him would have predicted as the strain of his review an indignant or else contemptuous exposure of the atheism, a fastening on the weak points in his own special subjects, as optics, and a cold recognition of his systematic comprehensiveness. This, however, was to leave out of the account one element—his antipathy to Whewell; sufficiently marked in a review of the "History of the Inductive Sciences" in the previous year. He found with joy a number of observations on hypothesis and other points, that he could turn against Whewell, and the effect was, I have no doubt, to soften the adverse criticisms, and to produce an article on the whole favorable to the book, and one that even Comte himself regarded with some complacency. Mill got wind of the two volumes in the end of 1837, after he had completed the draft of his book on Induction. The "Autobiography" gives (pp. 210-214) the general effect produced upon him by the whole work, which he perused with avidity as the successive volumes appeared; but does not adequately express the influence in detail, nor the warmth of esteem and affection displayed in the five years of their correspondence from 1841 to 1846. In our many conversations during the summer of 1842, Mill occasionally mentioned Comte, but not in a way to give me any clear conception of what his merits consisted in. Among his associates at that time was William Smith, lately dead, and known as the author of "Thorndale" and various other works. He was a pupil of the Mills in philosophy, and occupied himself in contributing to magazines. In the winter of that year, he wrote a review of Comte in "Blackwood" (March, 1843), giving very well-selected extracts; and from these I derived my first impression of the peculiar force of the book. I remember particularly being struck with the observations on the metaphysical and critical stage, as a vein of remark quite original.

It was in the summer of that year (1843) that I read the work for myself. I was in London as before, and had the same opportunities of conversing with Mill. We discussed the work chapter by chapter, up to the last volume, which I had not begun when I left town. We were very much at one, both as to the merits and as to the defects of the work. The errors were mostly of a kind that could be remedied by ordinary men better informed on special points than Comte; while the systematic array was untouched. The improvement effected in the classification of the sciences was apparent at a glance; while the carrying out of the hierarchy, involving the dependence of each science upon the preceding, first as to doctrine, and next as to method, raised the scheme above the usual barrenness of science-classifications. Mill had already seized with alacrity, and embodied in the "Logic," Comte's great distinction between social statics and social dynamics; and I was even more strongly impressed than he respecting the value of