The time, therefore, seems to have come, when every philosophic thinker
not only ought to form, but may usefully express, a judgment respecting
this intellectual movement; endeavouring to understand what it is,
whether it is essentially a wholesome movement, and if so, what is to be
accepted and what rejected of the direction given to it by its most
important movers. There cannot be a more appropriate mode of discussing
these points than in the form of a critical examination of the
philosophy of Auguste Comte; for which the appearance of a new edition
of his fundamental treatise, with a preface by the most eminent, in
every point of view, of his professed disciples, M. Littre, affords a
good opportunity. The name of M. Comte is more identified than any other
with this mode of thought. He is the first who has attempted its
complete systematization, and the scientific extension of it to all
objects of human knowledge. And in doing this he has displayed a
quantity and quality of mental power, and achieved an amount of success,
which have not only won but retained the high admiration of thinkers as
radically and strenuously opposed as it is possible to be, to nearly the
whole of his later tendencies, and to many of his earlier opinions.
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