Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography

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This volume begins to explore the life and works of Auguste Comte during his so-called second career, the controversial period that began in 1842 and lasted until his death. This volume covers the years from 1842 to 1852, when Comte transformed his positive philosophy into a political and religious movement. It represents the first in-depth study of that movement. Focusing on key books, such as the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, Mary Pickering connects Comte’s intellectual development to the tumultuous historical context and to episodes in his personal life, especially his famous relationship with Clotilde de Vaux. The book examines for the first time why workers, doctors, women, and famous writers, such as John Stuart Mill, George Henry Lewes, and Emile Littr´e, were drawn to his thought. Mary Pickering is Professor of History at San Jos´e State University. The author of Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volumes I, II, and III, she has published in Journal of the History of Ideas, Journal of Women’s History, Historical Reflections, Revue philosophique, and Revue internationale de philosophie.

Auguste Comte

AUGUSTE COM TE An Intellectual Biography, Volume II

mary pickering San Jos´e State University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521513258 © Mary Pickering 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13

978-0-511-59491-5

eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-51325-8

Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work are correct at the time of first printing, but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.

To Hank

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Notes

page xi xiii

Introduction 1 1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy 2 Tensions in Comte’s Relationships, 1842–1846 3 Clotilde de Vaux and the Initial Encounter with Comte 4 The Muse’s Tragic End 5 Pain and Recognition 6 The Revolution of 1848 7 Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme 8 Personal and Professional Disappointments 9 The Early Development of the Religion of Humanity 10 The Development of the Positivist Movement Conclusion

1 15 70 133 183 230 266 335 414 453 516 581

Bibliograpy Index

587 615

ix

Acknowledgments

Bringing this thirty-year enterprise to a close requires at least thirty pages of thanks. However, to spare the reader, the publisher, and myself that ordeal, I will limit my words of gratitude. I would like to thank the late Donald Fleming, my history adviser at Harvard, for first suggesting that I write a biography of Auguste Comte. Little did we know in 1978 that it would take almost my entire life to cover Comte’s. I am very grateful to all the people at the Maison d’Auguste Comte with whom I have worked: Sybil de Acevedo, Isabel PratasFrescata, Gilda Anderson, and more recently, the extremely helpful and kind Aur´elia Giusti. Bruno Gentil, the current president of the International Association of the Maison d’Auguste Comte, has also been very generous with his knowledge and support. The former president, the late Trajano Bruno de Berrˆedo Carneiro, encouraged me too. My thanks also go to the staffs of the Biblioth`eque Nationale, Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal, Archives Nationales, Archives de Paris, Archives D´epartementales du Rhˆone, Archives Municipales de Lyon, archives of the Ecole Polytechnique (especially Claudine Billoux), Bancroft Library at the University of California (especially Susan Snyder), Balliol Library at Oxford University, Bodleian Library at Oxford University, Harris Manchester College Library at Oxford University (especially Susan Killoran), British Library, British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics, University of Birmingham Library, New York Public Library, and Houghton Library at Harvard University (especially Jennie Rathbun). I am grateful to these libraries for permitting me to publish material from their archives. In addition, I reworked material from an essay in the New Biography (published by University of California Press) and from articles that I published in the Journal of Women’s History, Historical Reflections, Revue internationale de philosophie, and Revue philosophique. I thank UC Press and these publications. The Comte scholars Shin Abiko, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Michel Bourdeau, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, Anastasios Brenner, Ze¨ıneb Ben Cherni-Sa¨ıd, Laurent Clauzade, Jean Dhombres, Maria Donzelli, Mike Gane, Juliette Grange, the late Oscar Haac, Johan Heilbron, Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, the late Mirella Larizza, Annie Petit, H´elgio Trindade, Jean-Claude Wartelle, and Kaat Wils have helped me a great deal. I have appreciated their insights and friendship. xi

xii

Acknowledgments

Moreover, I am grateful for the assistance I received from the French government and the Institut Franc¸ais de Washington, which supported my research in Paris during the academic year 1983–4. Later I was very fortunate to receive a Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which allowed me to begin writing this volume in 1991–2. I would also like to thank Pace University and especially San Jos´e State University for granting me released time from teaching. San Jos´e State has given me two sabbaticals to write this book. At every step of the way, colleagues, chairs, and deans at San Jos´e State have been remarkably supportive of my research. Both the History Department and the College of Social Sciences have given Cambridge University Press substantial subventions to facilitate the publication of this book. I am extremely grateful in particular to Jonathan Roth, George Vasquez, and Tim Hegstrom for finding ways to give me time and financial backing. In addition, my colleagues Mike Conniff, Jack Bernhardt, Margo McBane, and Diane Baker, as well as my former students Thomas Abel and Laura Laife, have aided me in innumerable ways. Outside of San Jos´e State, Jo B. Margadant, Karen Offen, Londa Schiebinger, Lorenza Sebesta, Kathleen Kete, Lynn Wardley, George Sheridan, Edward Castleton, Takashi Sugimoto, and Christine Williams have given me important insights and tips on finding letters and other sources. Naomi Andrews and Jonathan Beecher gave me outstanding advice at all stages of the writing of the manuscript. David and Nicole Manson and Jim and Sylvie Owen always graciously welcomed me to their apartments during my research trips to Paris. My editor, Frank Smith, wins kudos for waiting patiently for fifteen years for this second volume. I thank him profusely for allowing me the space to develop Comte’s story in the proper manner. He has been an exemplary editor. William H. Stoddard, Peter W. Katsirubas and Donna Weiss were gracious and wise in polishing and preparing the manuscript for publication. Steve Siebert at Nota Bene helped with the index. Others who have been encouraging include John and Dawn Pickering, Peter and JoAnne Blasko, Hank and Betty Lauricella, Sherling Lauricella, Sheila Asher, Trish Kubal, Juana Schurman, Tony Ligamari, Edith Tobin, Lucy Gray, and David Thomson. I would also like to remember my parents, Helen and Alec Pickering, who sadly died before this biography was completed. Finally, I give a huge thanks to my three children, Nicolas, Natalia, and Michael Lauricella, and most of all to my husband, Hank Lauricella, who for thirty years has teased me about the “other man” in our marriage. Words cannot express my gratitude to him for never doubting that I would finish this biography and for helping me graciously every step of the way.

Abbreviations and Notes

abbreviations Although short titles have generally been used in the citations, several abbreviations warrant explanation: AN BN CG

EP MAC RO

Archives Nationales Biblioth`eque Nationale Auguste Comte: Correspondance g´en´erale et confessions. Edited by Paulo E. de Berrˆedo Carneiro, Pierre Arnaud, Paul Arbousse-Bastide, and Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti. 8 vols. Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1973– 90. Archives of the Ecole Polytechnique Archives of the Maison d’Auguste Comte, Paris La Revue Occidentale note s

The correspondence of Comte has been moved to the Biblioth`eque Nationale, where it is available on microfilm.The letters from Comte are in N.a.fr. 27092–27096. The letters to Comte are in N.a.fr. 27099– 27120. Copies of the letters are kept in the MAC. I have referred to them in the MAC, where I first consulted them in their original form in the 1980s. For pictures of Comte and his apartment, see the Web site of the Maison d’Auguste Comte: http://www.augustecomte.org. Emmanuel Lazinier, the president of the International Positivist Society, also maintains an interesting Web site: http://membres.lycos.fr/clotilde.

xiii

Introduction

The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology. Ludwig Feuerbach

In 2005, an American conservative weekly, Human Events, published a list of the “ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries.” Not surprisingly, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and Mao Zedong’s Quotations (Little Red Book) earned the first, second, and third spots, respectively. What was remarkable was that the eighth most dangerous book was the Cours de philosophie positive (1830–42), Auguste Comte’s first masterpiece. This book introduced Comte’s philosophy of positivism, which Human Events considered a threat to society because it denied the existence of God, asserting that “man alone, through scientific observation, could determine the way things ought to be.”1 Curiously, in 2003, the well-known French author and critic of liberalism Michel Houellebecq commended Comte: “Of all the structures produced by a society which do their part in establishing it, religion appears to him to be the most important, the most characteristic and the most threatened: man according to Comte can be defined approximately as a social animal of a religious type.” Comte was “one of the first to realize that the foundations of the social world were going to disappear” and that “religion as a system of explanations of the world” was obsolete. He was also “one of the first to have understood that the rational explanation of the universe must henceforth restrict itself to a more modest discourse” and “the first, absolutely, to try to give the social world a new religious basis.” This is the wonder of Auguste Comte: in a time of growing skepticism, he both opposed and favored religion, a stance that continues to confound scholars and social critics. In 1832, he proclaimed his “radical and absolute opposition to every kind of religious or metaphysical tendency.”2 Religious beliefs were 1 2

“Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries,” Human Events, May 31, 2005, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=7591 (accessed August 24, 2006). Comte to Michel Chevalier, January 5, 1832, Auguste Comte: Correspondance g´en´erale et confessions, ed. Paulo E. de Berrˆedo Carneiro, Pierre Arnaud, Paul Arbousse-Bastide, and Ang`ele Kremer-Marietti, 8 vols. (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1973–90), 1:229. Hereafter, this work will be cited as CG.

1

2

Introduction

anachronistic in an age of science when “human reason” had reached its “virile state.”3 But by the 1850s, he was urging everyone to worship Humanity, creating a new religious system replete with sacraments, and referring to the increasing religiosity of humankind throughout history. The transformation of Comte’s philosophy of positivism into the Religion of Humanity, thanks to his personal experiences and the impulses of the period, is the main subject of this volume and the following one. Although the notion of worshipping Humanity has often been criticized, Michel Bourdeau recently wrote, “In a period where we speak increasingly of crimes against humanity, it is surprising that no one or almost no one thinks to ask himself what there is so singular in humanity that crimes committed against it are the object of such reprobation, as if the response is self-evident. . . . It is time to make room for a central concept of positivist sociology,” that of humanity.4 Whereas the first volume of this biography of Comte focused on his early life from his birth in 1798 to the completion of his seminal Cours de philosophie positive in 1842, the second and third volumes investigate the remaining years of his life, from 1842 to his death in 1857. This fifteen-year period constitutes the most controversial years of his development, one that is often seen to be at odds with the concerns of his younger period. One of the main arguments of this biography is that there was no sudden break in Comte’s trajectory. There was simply a “new phase of positivism,” as he pointed out himself in 1847.5 This phase saw the blossoming of the positivist doctrine that he had established in the Cours and in his various early articles. In 1847, he started transforming this philosophical system, which was founded on the sciences, into a religion, the Religion of Humanity. He remained committed to the new field of study, sociology, which he had established in the 1830s, but he now added another science to his knowledge base: morality. Cultivating “altruism,” a word he coined in 1850, morality would be the seventh science in the positivist hierarchy, which already consisted of mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. Comte asserted that these branches of knowledge had reached their definitive form because they were based on the positive, or scientific, method. Thus their scientific laws must be based on observation and must explain how, not why, natural and social phenomena function. He tweaked his scientific system into a religion by demonstrating that all the sciences, as well as all our activities and feelings, should in the future be directed toward 3 4

5

Comte to Armand Marrast, January 7, 1832, CG, 1:233. Michel Bourdeau, “Science de l’homme ou science de l’humanit´e,” Auguste Comte et l’id´ee de science de l’homme, ed. Michel Bourdeau and Franc¸ois Chazel (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 294. Comte to Henri de Tholouze, December 18, 1847, CG, 4:130. See also Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:130.

Introduction

3

society, the subject of sociology. Comte had always believed that a unifying creed regulated the social order. Now he complemented that single belief-system based on the sciences with social practices founded largely on the emotions. Social harmony depended not only on intellectual consensus but also on emotional solidarity. The positivist religion encompassed both a common belief-system and the ritualistic, socializing processes that brought people together around the worship of society. Michel Foucault portrays the importance of the social body as a replacement for the king’s body after the latter was decapitated during the French Revolution: “It’s the body of society which becomes the new principle in the nineteenth century. It is this social body which needs to be protected, in a quasi-medical sense.”6 Lynn Hunt likewise points to the “sacred void” that was left after the king disappeared.7 Comte in a sense put society in that space; society needed to be venerated, just as the king had been. From that worship could emerge essential moral values and emotional bonds. Comte dared suggest that religion could exist without God and that a secular religion could embody a moral system.8 Comte brilliantly underscored the specificity of society as a real entity with its own regularities that could be captured by scientific laws and as a possible object of worship. Donald Levine writes, “In Comte’s view, . . . society is ‘essential’ in three senses: the term refers to a real being with essential properties, it is required as an object of attachment in order to establish moral guidelines, and it is necessary for instilling the moral values needed to sustain the social order.” In Comte’s opinion, moral values were needed not only to secure order but to guide progress. They thus helped maintain the cohesion of the social body and its advancement. Moral values were inculcated by “social institutions” such as the family, which developed feelings of attachment and veneration, and religion, which cultivated the love of Humanity.9 In the future positivist society, everyone would worship Humanity, working to improve society as a whole; the earth, upon which society depended; and even human nature itself. The story of Comte’s last fifteen years thus fits into competing interpretations of the narrative of the nineteenth century. First of 6

7 8

9

Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper (New York: Pantheon,1980), 55. Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 3. Michel Bourdeau perceptively notes that Comte deserves credit for having seen “the necessity of asking the question: which religion will exist after the death of God?” Michel Bourdeau, “Auguste Comte et la religion positiviste: Pr´esentation,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et th´eologiques 87 (2003): 20. Donald Levine, Visions of the Sociological Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 167. See also 169.

4

Introduction

all, his tale attests to the growing “secularization of the European mind.”10 The Church itself had been under attack since the French Revolution for abusing its wealth, power, and position. Many critics of the Establishment sought to create a more tolerant, just, and pluralistic society and found religion to be a hindrance in their campaign. Industrialization and the accompanying process of urbanization led to a decline in churchgoing. Advances in Biblical scholarship and increasingly compelling scientific explanations of natural phenomena challenged Christian revelation. Thinkers such as Karl Marx and Thomas Huxley completely removed theology, if not God, from their philosophies. Ludwig Feuerbach suggested that man created God. As one scholar has noted, philosophers of the nineteenth century believed that “the duty of the modern age was the humanization of God, who was merely a projection of man’s own inner nature.”11 Indeed, man himself was increasingly the focus of knowledge.12 With the science of society at its core, Comte’s doctrine is often labelled secular humanism. Claude Nicolet, the French historian of republicanism, commended Comte’s positivism for being humanistic because it confirmed the power of man to save himself and to reach his potential by using his reason, a human faculty.13 There was nothing beyond man, that is, humanity, and everyone had to work to improve life on this earth rather than pray for eternal salvation.14 As suggested above, secularization was linked to the growing domination of the sciences, which formed the core of positivism. The nineteenth century saw the triumph of scientists, who had taken power for the first time in the French Revolution. Michel Serres writes about this period, An astronomer was Mayor of Paris, the inventor of topology was at the head of the Committee for Public Health, the scholars occupied the institutions before the people did and in their place, and a geometrician, although a minor, gained the title of Emperor. The nobility and the clergy collapsed, society no longer lived according to the same divisions or the same offices, scientists at last formed a class or a genus, replacing the clerics and forming a new Church.15 10

11 12 13 14 15

This phrase comes from Heinrich Hermelink. See Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 11. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), 310. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1973), 386–7. Claude Nicolet, L’Id´ee r´epublicaine en France: Essai d’histoire critique (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 501. Juliette Grange, Introduction to Politique d’Auguste Comte (Paris: Payot, 1996), xi. Michel Serres, Introduction to A History of Scientific Thought: Elements of a History of Science, ed. Michel Serres (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), 13.

Introduction

5

Comte’s promotion of positivist philosophers as the new spiritual power in the coming “positive era” – the third stage of history when positivism would triumph – attests to the importance of scientists in the nineteenth century. Their status was changing; the old patronage system was dying as scientific careers were becoming professionalized.16 Comte tried to find his place among the new scientists, as reflected in his various campaigns to enter the Academy of Sciences and to land a position at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Coll`ege de France in order to bolster his authority. But his attempt to achieve academic recognition foundered, and he ended up a scientific bohemian, living at the margins of the scientific establishment and caught in a series of vicious circles. Unconnected by family ties or powerful friends to the scientific elite and unwilling to compromise his integrity, he could not make the patronage system work for him. Nor could he meet the new impersonal professional standards that required specialization and research publications without sacrificing his philosophical mission. His ambivalence toward scientists, which was apparent early in his career, became more marked. He wanted scientists to advance but also to become less specialized, less isolated, and less interested in their own careers – in effect, to reject the demands of professionalization. He urged scientists to become more devoted to the needs of the entire community, an idea that ran against the new individualism of the capitalist, liberal age. He may not have been a democrat in politics but in a sense he was one in the academic world, for he believed the interests of the people should be at the forefront of research. The true scientific spirit had to be an extension of common sense. With their jargon and arrogance, scientists distanced themselves too much from the public. Comte’s constant criticism of scientists on these points incurred their enmity. But the positivist doctrine, which was based on the sciences, could not triumph if it did not get the stamp of approval of the scientists. He could not gain legitimacy for his anti-elitist views, which prioritized the needs of the entire community, unless he was part of the elite body of scientists. Unable to resolve the quandary, he presented himself as a martyr, persecuted by scientists, especially mathematicians, who he believed were fearful of positive philosophy because it criticized their dominance and threatened to rob them of their prestigious posts once it triumphed and rearranged society so that social interests prevailed over individuals’ selfish concerns. Besides fitting into the narrative of the growing importance of the sciences and their influence on the emerging secular mind, 16

Robert Fox, “Science, the University, and the State in Nineteenth-Century France,” in Professions and the French State, 1700–1900, ed. Gerald L. Geison (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 66–7, 73; Maurice Crosland, Science under Control: The French Academy of Sciences 1795–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 28–30.

6

Introduction

Comte’s system demonstrates in an apparently contradictory fashion the inherent religiosity of the period. The French Revolution and Napoleon’s efforts to control, if not persecute, the Catholic Church, had caused a dip in religious practices. During the Restoration, religion made a comeback, but the vehement anticlericalism of twenty years had left its mark. Religious ideas became truly acceptable and widespread again only beginning in the 1840s. New religious orders were founded, and new religious schools proliferated thanks to the Loi Falloux of 1850, which allowed freedom of instruction. Religious fervor was reflected in the apparitions of the Virgin in 1846 and 1858. The notion of the Immaculate Conception became a dogma in 1854.17 Even leftist movements registered the revived Christianity of the period. Eager to help the working class and women, many early socialists tried to reestablish Christianity in a new, more egalitarian form.18 Beginning in the1830s, new churches were established, most notably that of the Saint-Simonians, who were inspired by the Nouveau Christianisme (1825) of Henri de Saint-Simon, Comte’s former employer.19 Influenced by conservative thinkers and their own Catholic upbringing, Saint-Simon and other French socialists, such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, wanted society to be directed by moral values. K. Steven Vincent writes, “Employing notions of ‘civic virtue’ and ‘civil religion’ . . . , the socialists were able to fashion a progressive social theory which was strongly moral – even spiritual.”20 Although Comte preferred the value of fraternity to that of equality, he felt much affinity to these republican socialists, whom he saw as his chief rivals in trying to guide society to do more for the common people. But unlike many of them, he boldly sought to disassociate morality from a religion based on God. As Michel Serres points out, Comte glimpsed that “there exists something exterior even to the self-sustaining totality, and the second is founded upon the first. He calls this foundation religious. And he is right, even if it is no more than the immanence of humanity or of the Great-Being in itself.”21 Working for the benefit of humanity in a spirit of fraternity became the basis of the positivist morality. In an age preoccupied with the ability of the sciences to transform the world, he reminded people of the ethical dimensions of 17 18 19 20 21

G´erard Cholvy, Etre chr´etien en France au XIXe si`ecle, 1790–1914 (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 29, 30, 168. Naomi J. Andrews, Socialism’s Muse: Gender in the Intellectual Landscape of French Romantic Socialism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington Books, 2006), 17. Paul B´enichou, Le Temps des Proph`etes: Doctrines de l’ˆage romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 269. K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 6. Michel Serres, “Paris 1800,” in A History of Scientific Thought: Elements of a History of Science, ed. Michele Serres (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), 453.

Introduction

7

their employment. Comte might have been impressed by the sciences, which helped us explain the world on rational, demonstrable grounds, but he was adamant about recognizing the limits of their power. Thus contrary to the opinion expressed in Human Events, he asserted that we need to adjust to an age of diminished expectations because he realized there was a great deal that individuals could not change, as Houellebecq pointed out. Although he seemed to uphold the importance of the individual as a contributor to civilization, he worried about rampant individualism, as many republican socialists did as well.22 To him, egoism was the typical nineteenth-century disease – a disease that had to be overcome by altruism. Struck by the alienating effects of the Industrial Revolution on workers and the new imperialistic drives of his fellow Europeans, whose exuberant nationalism he found disturbing, Comte seemed to be among the few nineteenth-century thinkers eager to promote cosmopolitanism and what Daniel Gordon calls the “culture of sociability,” which was prominent in the eighteenth century. The philosopher Paul Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, for example, wanted the feeling of humanity to be universal.23 Comte condemned individualism, specialization, liberalism, unregulated capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism because he believed that they diminished sociability or the sentiment of our common humanity. Although a prophet of progress, he seemed dismayed by the future direction of the world. According to him, people were too enamored of rationality and had forgotten the importance of the emotions and of human connections. More than other political theorists, such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu, he attempted to find ways to bring people together on an affective plane.24 His emphasis on the interconnectedness of individuals reflects the new forms of civil society that were emerging after the French Revolution. Comte sought to channel the growing impulses toward sociability that appeared in the bourgeoisie’s exclusive reading clubs, salons, and cercles as well as in the vibrant voluntary associations and clubs that grew up among workers in the first half of the nineteenth century.25 He wanted to accelerate and direct this proliferation of new social organizations by fostering positivist salons, clubs, temples, and so forth. Andrew Wernick recently criticized Comte not only for creating a system where people seemed connected mainly by their devotion to Humanity but also for not exploring different types of 22 23 24 25

Vincent, Proudhon, 6. Daniel Gordon, Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 42, 66. On these philosophers, see Hunt, Family Romance, 4. Maurice Agulhon, “Working Class and Sociability in France before 1848,” in The Power of the Past: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, ed. Pat Thane, Geoffrey Crossick, and Roderick Floud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 51, 58–9.

8

Introduction

loving, face-to-face ties between people; Comte’s notion of the social, according to Wernick, was surprisingly not very deep.26 There is some truth to Wernick’s criticism. Nevertheless, Comte did try to foster familial relationships and relationships in the workplace. He organized society in an almost maniacal way to create spaces where sociability could blossom. Comte endeavored above all to create a tightly knit positivist movement. Deeply affected by the Revolution of 1848, he wished to participate more actively in the new political culture that was evolving at the time. He longed to be a respected leader. He yearned for disciples. Inspired by the clubs that were proliferating in Paris, he launched the Positivist Society in March 1848 to promote his ideas and prepare for the positivist takeover of power. Volumes two and three represent the first study of his movement, focusing on the means he used to attract, affect, and shape his disciples. These volumes are based on almost thirty years of research, many of them spent in the archives of Comte’s former apartment in Paris, which contain his large correspondence, and in archives in other places in France, Britain, and the United States. They look in depth at Comte’s followers, friends, and enemies to see what was attractive and offensive about his philosophy and his personality, which were intertwined. His tendency toward manic-depression often led him to tweak his ideas in sometimes offputting directions and to alienate potential followers and friends. Comte made a point of exposing his private life to public scrutiny to show that he was transparent and thus pure. This appearance of transparency was a pose of the revolutionaries, such as Maximilien Robespierre, who likewise sought legitimacy in virtuous selfrepresentations to assert their authority. Indeed, Comte’s life is a series of poses. The scholar Kali Israel recently mocked the whole biographical enterprise for being a “refuge from postmodernity, a haven in an epistemologically unsettled world.” By presenting individuals as “coherent and continuous subjects,” biographies offer “a reassuring faith in the knowability of past subjective experience and the existence of unified, if mobile and adventurous, selves.” Israel challenged biographers to recognize that they can never know their subjects because “selves are made and remade and unstable and discontinuous.”27 It is indeed hard to “know” Comte because he was constantly refashioning himself to appeal to many different audiences: workers, women, aristocrats, conservatives, and so forth. A kind of nineteenth-century drama queen, he was as inventive with regard 26 27

Andrew Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity: The Post-Theistic Program of French Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 216–20, 263. Kali Israel, Names and Stories: Emilia Dilke and Victorian Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 17.

Introduction

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to his own person as to his doctrine. He simply loved melodrama, which was deeply embedded in nineteenth-century French culture. The story of his life lends itself perfectly to the postmodern or “new” biography, which, according to Jo Burr Margadant, looks at “an individual with multiple selves whose different manifestations reflect the passage of time, the demands and options of different settings, or the variety of ways that others seek to represent that person.”28 This volume covers ten years of Comte’s life, from 1842 to approximately 1852. In 1852, shortly after the coup d’´etat of Louis Napoleon, Comte increasingly accentuated the conservative strain of his thought, which had begun to emerge in 1850, flummoxing many of his followers. His pursuit of new disciples, especially among conservatives, during the last five years of his life will be the subject of volume three. Volume two highlights his efforts to reforge his identity after the disappointments stemming from the poor reception of the Cours de philosophie positive and his failed marriage. During the ten-year period from 1842 to 1852, Comte was very productive, partly because unpredictable encounters and events enriched his doctrine. His relationships with new women, particularly Sarah Austin and Clotilde de Vaux; his mentorship of young men in need of guidance both professionally and spiritually; his interest in the working class; his commitment to an intellectual elite to replace the traditional clergy; and his excitement regarding the Revolution of 1848 encouraged the transformation of his doctrine into a religion and a political movement that vied with leftist reformers in attempting to solve the “social question.” Comte would elaborate on his religious and political ideas in the Syst`eme de politique positive, published in four volumes between 1851 and 1854. This work, which many scholars regard as his second masterpiece after the Cours de philosophie positive, will be analyzed in volume three. Before writing it, Comte composed four shorter works on both the sciences and on his philosophy, which will be discussed in volume two. The first two chapters of this volume discuss the works that Comte published after the Cours de philosophie positive, the problems he faced at work, and his tense personal relationships. The Cours (1830–42) consisted of six volumes covering the major sciences, including the new one, sociology. It presented a unified system of knowledge. Comte was convinced that if people had common ideas, derived from demonstrable scientific explanations, and if they learned to think in a similar, rational fashion, social unity would be enhanced. Inculcating these common ideas, education was one of the 28

Jo Burr Margadant, introduction to The New Biography: Performing Femininity in NineteenthCentury France, ed. Jo Burr Margadant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 7.

10

Introduction

keys to the regeneration of society. In 1843 and 1844, he published the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, a textbook on geometry; the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, which derived from the astronomy course that he had given to workers and others since 1831; and the Discours sur l’esprit positif, which contained the philosophical preamble to that course in 1843 and summed up the tenets of positivism. Anticipating the religion that he would found several years later, he insisted in the Discours that knowledge be unified around Humanity and its needs and that it was time to reorganize morality. These chapters also investigate the challenges he faced at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he had worked since 1832. He was an admissions examiner and a r´ep´etiteur, that is, teaching assistant, for one of the two courses in analysis and mechanics. Despite Comte’s claim to be an expert on educational matters, the administrators at the Ecole Polytechnique were not pleased by his performance. In 1844, he was fired from his job of admissions examiner, although he was allowed to remain a teaching assistant. Based on archival work at the Ecole Polytechnique, these chapters treat Comte’s tense relationship with the faculty and administration, pinpointing weaknesses in his claim that his enemies were out to starve him into oblivion in revenge for his attacks on the scientific regime in the Cours. Many of their complaints about his methods and outside publications, which went against school rules, had a solid foundation. Minutes of the faculty meetings underscore the fairness of the professors in dealing with the obdurate founder of positivism. These chapters also shed light on Comte’s relationships with his old friend, Pierre Valat; his wife, Caroline Massin, from whom he separated in mid-1842; John Stuart Mill, with whom he had been corresponding since 1841; and Sarah Austin and her husband, who were friends of Mill. All of these relationships foundered. Chapter two discusses at length the effect of Comte’s friendship with Mill on the evolution of both men’s thoughts. One subject that was a frequent source of friction between the two men was “the woman question.” Their arguments over woman’s equality led the exasperated Mill to write The Subjection of Women (1869), where he indirectly condemned Comte’s misogynist position, which originated partly in wrangling with the decidedly insubordinate Caroline Massin, his wife. Sarah Austin, a famous translator whom Comte met in 1843, was similar to Massin in that she was an intelligent, independent woman who stood up to Comte and refused to accept his patronizing attitude. Nevertheless, frustrated by her reclusive husband, she enjoyed Comte’s company. Despite her constant scolding, Comte liked to be with her because he encountered few women after his wife left him. Their friendship ended when she fled France in 1848. Chapters three and four focus on one of the most dramatic episodes of Comte’s life: his unconsummated affair with Clotilde de Vaux, a young woman who died in 1846, shortly after they met.

Introduction

11

Their relationship was one of the most famous of the nineteenth century, comparable to that of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor. Using the tools developed by feminist historians, this section makes her out to be a multidimensional figure, not the bland virtuous madonna usually featured by Comtean scholars, who present her solely as the philosopher’s muse. Henri Gouhier, the great Comtean scholar and Academician, for example, maintains that de Vaux had “nothing to teach him” except for the “education of the heart.”29 She did indeed reveal to him the richness of emotional life, which was crucial to the evolution of the Religion of Humanity. However, she was not solely responsible for the creation of that religion, which Comte imputes to her time after time. Comte’s religion would have emerged without her help because of his longtime commitment to the emotions and society and his other close relationships, but it might have been more abstract and mechanical. Nevertheless, de Vaux should not be treated simply instrumentally. These chapters shed light on her struggle to imitate other women writers of the era like George Sand. Abandoned by her husband and humiliated by having to depend on her parents for support, de Vaux sought above all to make a name for herself as a novelist and resisted Comte’s attempt to imprison her in his image of the perfect woman. Her case enriches our understanding of the frustrations experienced by many nineteenth-century bourgeois women. Her plight also spurred Comte to undertake a more serious response to the “woman question.” Like the romantic socialists, he increasingly sought to feminize society to make its members less isolated, less egoistic, and more interdependent. As Naomi Andrews explains, “Unity was a compelling focus of romantic socialist discourse,” and the “depiction of womanhood” as selfless and dependent “reflects this priority.” Like French socialists, Comte used an idealized, relational image of woman to combat social fragmentation. Like them also, he did not think of giving women their political rights, thus dooming their so-called emancipation.30 Nevertheless, thanks in part to Mill, Austin, and de Vaux, Comte in the 1850s suggested that women would have a key role in the positivist republic. Chapters five through eight revolve around Comte’s reaction to the deaths of various friends, his estrangement from his family and others close to him, and his efforts to mentor young men to compensate for his disappointments and losses and to offset his growing isolation. In this age of romanticism, where one’s identity was increasingly based on one’s emotive state, Comte found many people eager to tell him their feelings and innermost secrets. He enjoyed playing the role of confessor. 29 30

Henri Gouhier, La Jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme, 3 vols. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1933–41), 1:28. Andrews, Socialism’s Muse, xvii, xxi–xxii, 72–3.

12

Introduction

Chapter five examines Comte’s response to the death of Charles Bonnin, one of his first disciples; his break with Lenoir, another close friend, his problems with his father, Louis Comte, and his sister, Alix Comte; his relationships with several young acolytes, such as CharlesGabriel Bernard, Barbot de Chement, Pierre Laffitte, and ModesteEtienne Claudel; and his difficult time with Henri de Blainville, a scientist who had mentored him in the past. This chapter also treats the spread of positivism. Comte began to attract disciplines in Holland, and his following grew in England. The scientist Alexander Williamson and the writer George Henry Lewes, who was later close to George Eliot, were two well-respected English enthusiasts. Their support gave Comte added credibility. The most important new follower was the brilliant French lexicographer and writer Emile Littr´e, whose adherence to positivism is also examined in depth in chapter five. He wrote many reviews of Comte’s works for leading journals as well as a number of books on positivism. He would become Comte’s most influential disciple in France, one who would later help make his doctrine a foundation stone of the Third Republic. Chapter six looks at Comte’s role in the tumult of the late 1840s, when he adopted a more militant role, cemented his ties to workers, called on women for support, and confronted challenges from socialism and communism, which shared his concerns with the “social question.” In 1847 and 1848, he transformed his philosophy into a religion to broaden its appeal; he sought to attract women, who were usually considered avid churchgoers, and working-class socialists and communists, many of whom sought moral solution to social problems. A number of reformers of the 1840s used religious rhetoric to reinforce their views. Pierre Leroux, a former Saint-Simonian, made Humanity into a god. Comte was also taken with Humanity. In 1847, he started referring to the Religion of Humanity that he wished to establish. He gave several lectures of a new course on the history of humanity before it was closed by the government. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the famous socialist, was one of the auditors. In short, responding to the religious fervor of the times, Comte sought to unite more closely the members of society around a common creed that had demonstrable principles and a strong humanitarian morality. His religion did not represent an aberration because since his youth, he had asserted that a system of beliefs was a crucial integrating force in society. Now he increasingly called that system a “religion.” This chapter also shows how he became more politicized during the Revolution of 1848, which he welcomed enthusiastically. In March, he founded his club, the Positivist Society, to prepare for the coming of the positivist era in a more direct manner. It eventually comprised approximately fifty lower- and middle-class members from Paris, the provinces, and abroad. Under his direction, the Positivist Society published several policy papers on elections, education, medicine, work,

Introduction

13

and the nature of a positivist revolutionary government. One paper was written by Charles Robin, an influential doctor of the period. In the wake of the Revolution of 1848, Comte also tried unsuccessfully to establish a positivist journal, the Revue Occidentale. In an attempt to spread positivist religious and political principles, especially among workers and women, who were to be allies of positive philosophers, he wrote Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme (1848), which is treated in chapter seven. Elaborating on his introductory philosophical lectures of his astronomy course of 1847, the Discours later became part of the first volume of the Syst`eme de politique positive. For the first time, Comte began to refer routinely to his positive philosophy as “positivism” in order to represent positivism as a complete system capable of taking on the other isms of the day: Catholicism, conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and communism. His philosophy was indeed both a religion and a political movement, joined together by devotion to Humanity. He presented the improvement of Humanity as the ideal focus of all thoughts, feelings, and actions, hoping to make people not only more logical intellectually but also more sociable and energetic. Condemning both the extreme right and the extreme left, but especially the former, he urged everyone to work hard to generate society in order to make it more harmonious and peaceful. Class oppression would end if a positivist republic was set up and proletarians were truly incorporated into society. These objectives would be attained when the positivist republic was ruled by a new positivist clergy and a triumvirate of enlightened dictators, who would originate from the working class at least until the industrialists were reformed. This chapter will point out that many of Comte’s ideas, such as the dictatorship of the proletariat, were similar to those of Karl Marx. One way in which they differed was that Comte saw women as agents of social unity. Influenced by Mill, Austin, and de Vaux as well as by the discourse of contemporary feminists, he utilized the rhetoric of republican motherhood for his own purposes. Though uninterested in granting them political rights, he wanted women to be given a better education and more authority so that they could spread love throughout society. They would act as moral guardians, helping workers and positive philosophers to counter the egoism and materialism of industrialists. The cult of Woman would in fact become part of the cult of Humanity. Trying to find a middle ground between the right and left and feminizing his doctrine, Comte summed up the nature of the positivist republic with the following slogan: “Love for the principle, order for the basis, and progress for the goal.” Chapter eight continues to treat the ways in which he propagated his ideas, and it shows the personal and professional costs of his dedication. The time Comte spent fine-tuning and spreading his religion detracted from his teaching duties. This chapter examines his

14

Introduction

failures to regain his post of admissions examiner in 1848 and to obtain a chair at the Coll`ege de France. In addition, it covers his dismissal from his teaching position at the Institut Laville (a preparatory school). Emile Littr´e was so worried about Comte that he created a fund – the Positivist Subsidy – to provide him with financial support. Besides looking at Comte’s unstable professional life, this chapter examines his fluctuating political views. He did not approve of the election of Louis Napoleon as president of the Second Republic. He soon became disillusioned with the regime, which he found oppressive, weak, and ineffective. When the government tried to shut down his new course on the history of humanity in late 1849, he was in despair. Thanks to the efforts of the ever loyal Caroline Massin, who helped him secure permission from the minister of public works, his course began again in April 1850. Several hundred people attended his long lectures. During this course, he perhaps used the term “altruism” for the first time. Chapter nine focuses on the development of Comte’s religion with its new calendar, cult of the dead, temples, sacraments, and flags, which owed much to the French revolutionary and Catholic traditions. To deepen his understanding of human nature, he created a chart or tableau of the mind. Besides classifying the organs of the brain, he categorized books: he devised a Positivist Library or canon, consisting of 150 books, which he hoped his followers would read in order to develop their minds and character. As he became more dogmatic about his own beliefs and his behavior, he infuriated to a greater degree his wife, old friends (including Blainville), and family members. His movement was burgeoning and his discourse was full of references to love and sociability, but he was growing more isolated. When Blainville died and he spoke harshly of him at his funeral, some people in the audience found Comte downright cruel. Chapter ten takes a long look at some of Comte’s leading disciples, including Joseph Lonchampt, Georges Audiffrent, Auguste Hadery, and Jean-Franc¸ois-Eug`ene Robinet. It also covers the spread of his movement to England, Scotland, the United States, Italy, Belgium, Germany, and the provinces of France. In particular, Comte gathered a large following among the workers in Lyon. In addition, the chapter sheds light on Comte’s curious turn to the right, beginning in 1850. As he became more volatile and eccentric, his position at the Ecole Polytechnique, deteriorated. He lost his last job, the minor post of r´ep´etiteur in 1851. He now depended to a greater extent on the Positivist Subsidy. This reliance on public support reinforced his picture of himself as a devoted, incorruptible priest of Humanity. Deeply aware of the power of visual culture, he sought out portrait artists such as Antoine Etex to immortalize his image. Comte was remaking himself into an iconic figure.

Chapter 1

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

If the time of butchers and poisonings or simply that of guillotines could come back, they [the members of the pedantocracy] would dare to do everything against me because they are always motivated by the same hatreds . . . The crimes of well-bred people have . . . undergone the same radical transformation as those of the rabble, who increasingly steal instead of kill: according to this . . . fortunate influence of our civilization, one no longer can oppress . . . except [through] the purse. This is what those people have attempted to do to me. Comte, July 22, 1844

comte’s thre e projects The year 1842 was a difficult one for Comte. He was upset that the Catholic press suddenly attacked him for promoting atheism in his weekly lectures on astronomy for workers. Most of all, the great push to complete the sixth and final volume of the Cours de philosophie positive before missing yet another deadline exhausted him. For twelve years, he had experienced difficulties in balancing his teaching duties with his commitment to writing this work, which he believed would provide the basis for a reorganization of Western society. His tendency to devote all his “free” time to completing the Cours had contributed to his estrangement from his wife, who threatened to leave him. The intensity of his intellectual life and the instability of his domestic situation made him fear he would experience an attack of madness similar to the one that had sent him to an asylum in 1826. He even began to learn Spanish as a way of releasing “cerebral” energy.1 Despite his problems, he was finally able to finish the last volume on July 19, 1842. His wife left him on August 5. Comte was relieved that their “civil war” was over, but he felt isolated and lonely.2 He yearned for some free time. During the past twelve years, he had written over four thousand pages on positivism and sociology. Since 1837, the year he became an admissions officer for the prestigious engineering school the Ecole Polytechnique, he had faced constant 1

2

Caroline Massin to Comte, March 29, 1843, MAC. Comte believed that languages could be learned in a year if one was not burdened by grammar books and teachers. Comte to Hadery, December 14, 1855, CG, 8:160. Comte to John Stuart Mill, August 24, 1842, CG, 2:76.

15

16

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

teaching obligations, even in the summer.3 In fact, four days after finishing the Cours, Comte had to begin giving oral examinations to three hundred young men, first in Paris and then in the provinces. Once again he did not get a real vacation. When the drudgery of giving examinations was over in October, Comte immediately threw himself into a suit against Bachelier, his publisher. Bachelier had inserted into the last volume of the Cours a statement repudiating Comte’s derogatory views of scientists, especially Franc¸ois Arago, whose books Bachelier published.4 A mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, Arago was a former professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, which he headed temporarily after the Revolution of 1830. In 1830, he was made perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, which was a more important position than that of president. (The presidency was only a one-year, honorary position.) From 1832 to 1844, Arago represented the Academy of Sciences in one of the main administrative bodies of the school, the Council of Improvement (Conseil de Perfectionnement). As perpetual secretary of the Academy and its representative on the Council of Improvement, he exercised more influence over the school than any other scientist, especially in the appointment of its professors. Whenever a chair became vacant, the Academy of Sciences presented to the minister of war a list of the candidates it wanted to see appointed. Due to the prestige of the Academy, its decision about who should be appointed professor at the Ecole Polytechnique had taken on more weight than the opinion of the Council of Instruction, the administrative body of the school that oversaw the selection process.5 Arago and several other important scientists, such as Louis Thenard, Denis Poisson, JeanBaptiste Biot, and Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac, all of whom had been promoted during the Napoleonic Empire, had shaped or blocked the scientific careers of aspiring young scientists for decades.6 In the sixth volume of the Cours, Comte attacked Arago, calling his influence on the Ecole Polytechnique “disastrous.”7 Comte suggested that Arago 3 4 5

6

7

Henri Gouhier, La Vie d’Auguste Comte, 2d ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965), 178. Comte to John Stuart Mill, July 22, 1842, CG, 2:57. This power to present candidates was given to the Academy in the reorganization of the school after the Revolution of 1830. It was thought that the Council of Improvement, which up to this point had been the only body to present candidates, could not by itself resist the authority of the minister of war if the latter became too strong. (In 1822, the Council indeed had been deprived of its rights by a royal ordinance.) See “Acad´emie des Sciences,” Le National, August 21, 1844, 1. Bruno Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie: l’Ecole Polytechnique et ses e´l`eves de la R´evolution au Second Empire (Paris: Belin, 2003), 52, 91–2; Pierre Laffitte, “Mat´eriaux pour s´ervir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Carri`ere polytechnique d’Auguste Comte,” Revue Occidentale [hereafter RO] 19 (1887): 314. Auguste Comte, Physique sociale: Cours de philosophie positive, lec¸ons 46 a` 60, ed. Jean-Paul Enthoven (Paris: Hermann, 1975) [hereafter Cours, 2], 670.

Comte’s Three Projects

17

made it impossible for him to secure an academic position. There may have been some truth to his assertion. According to Bruno Belhoste, Arago managed to get many of his friends appointed to professorships at the Ecole Polytechnique: Pierre-Louis Dulong (director of studies); Charles-Franc¸ois Sturm and Joseph Liouville (professors of analysis and mechanics); F´elix Savary and his replacement, Michel Chasles (professors of geodesy); and Gabriel Lam´e (professor of physics).8 Comte became so paranoid that he even imagined that Arago, along with his young friend Liouville, had conspired to delay the completion of the Cours.9 Though Arago held sway in political and academic circles, Comte won the suit against Bachelier in December. However, for months he had not been able to sleep because of his worries about the result of the trial. When it was over, he realized that to preserve his health, especially his sanity, he had to make 1843 his year of rest. Little did he know that his sense of mission would instead lead him to wage further battles against the scientific establishment or “pedantocracy,” a term invented by his good friend John Stuart Mill. Comte also felt the need to rest in order to prepare for his next major work, a book on his political philosophy, which he had announced at the end of the Cours. He had been thinking about it since the 1820s, but he had yet to organize his ideas and formulate an outline for the four volumes he knew it would entail. He decided that he would not write anything about his political philosophy in 1843 but would limit himself to preparing it “in bed, on walks, at the theater, in short, everywhere but . . . [at his] desk.”10 He imagined that as in the past, once he had all the details of a book firmly set in his mind, he would start writing at a furious pace. He planned to complete a volume a year in order to finish the project by 1848. Then he would devote himself to his other promised works, those on the philosophy of mathematics, positive education, and humanity’s influence on nature. His greatest fear was that he would die before completing them all. He thus considered 1843 the only year free from serious philosophical writing that he would ever have.11 8

9

10 11

Bruno Belhoste, “Un Mod`ele a` l’´epreuve. L’Ecole polytechnique de 1794 au Second Empire,” in La Formation polytechnicienne 1794–1994, ed. Bruno Belhoste, A. Dahan Dalmedico, and A. Picon (Paris: Dunod, 1994), 25. Curiously, Massin remembered how “aimiable” Arago was to Comte when they used to meet at the house of a friend, Turpin. Massin to Comte, February 13, 1845, MAC. Comte to M. Bailleul, August 8, 1842, in “Alcune Lettere in´edite di Auguste Comte,” by Mirella Larizza, Il Pensiero Politico 26 (September–December 1993): 410. This letter is not in CG. Comte to Mill, November 5, 1842, CG, 2:105. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1842, CG, 2:58; Comte to Valat, November 22, 1843, CG, 2:216; Cours, 2:788–90.

18

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

But Comte could not bear to pass the year in idleness. To divert himself, he decided to publish three books relating to his “fundamental function,” that is, teaching.12 He had been devoted to education since he had been a substitute for his own mathematics instructor at his lyc´ee in Montpellier. After having given private mathematics lessons for years, he had become a teaching assistant (r´ep´etiteur) for the course in analysis and mechanics at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1832. (Analysis was akin to calculus.13 ) There were approximately twenty-four r´ep´etiteurs, who assisted the twelve professors by presiding over discussion groups, clarifying the course material, correcting homework, and advising the students on how to improve their performance.14 In 1836, Comte also started teaching at the Institut Laville, a preparatory school for students aspiring to be Polytechniciens.15 Popular education attracted him as well. Since 1831, he had been giving a free course on astronomy to workers and other adults in the basement of the city hall of what was then the third arrondissement, located on the rue des Petits-P`eres near the church of Notre Dame des Victoires.16 As if he were competing with Mass, he gave the course on Sundays from noon until two o’clock. The course usually went from late January to the end of July. He counted on the lectures not only to raise the level of popular instruction but to display his superior morality, thus legitimizing his role as the regenerator of the West. To him, the “slightest speech,” even if it had to do with the driest parts of mathematics, had a musical component that came from the lecturer’s or orator’s emotions and thus displayed his “moral character.”17 The first work relating to education that he intended to write was a synopsis of part of the course that he gave at the Institut Laville. The course consisted of analytical geometry in two dimensions, analytical geometry in three dimensions, advanced algebra, and 12 13 14 15

16

17

Comte to Mill, July 22, 1842, CG, 2:58. Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 232. Terry Shinn, L’Ecole Polytechnique, 1794–1914 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation National des Sciences Politiques, 1980), 46. It was located on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques. Comte taught there from November 1 to May 1. Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 60; Auguste Comte, Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique a` deux et a` trois dimensions, contenant toutes les th´eories g´en´erales de g´eom´etrie accessibles a` l’analyse ordinaire (Paris, Carillian-Goeury et Vor Dalmont, 1843), vii. The numbers of the arrondissements were rearranged in 1860. The city hall was destroyed during Haussmann’s remodeling of Paris during the Second Empire, but if still standing, it would be in the second arrondissement today. Pierre Laffitte, ed., “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886): 191. Auguste Comte, Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, ed. Annie Petit (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), 316. This edition reproduces the original of 1848. Comte made some modifications when he transformed it into the first part of volume one of the Syst`eme.

Comte’s Three Projects

19

differential calculus. In 1836, he had made a detailed outline of the course and lithographed the fifty-page brochure for distribution because he thought he taught it in a clever manner. Convinced that his innovations were already influencing teachers, he now chose to publish the “most essential” lectures, those sixty-four lessons from the first half of the course that covered analytical geometry in two and three dimensions.18 Why, one might well ask, did the founder of positivism wish to waste his precious time on what amounted to a mere textbook? The answer lies partly in his synthetic drive. As early as 1824, Comte had expressed a desire to publish “several . . . works on fundamental points of mathematics” in the intervals when he was not writing his “great philosophical works.” By attaching his concepts of mathematics to his “general ideas of positive philosophy,” he reinforced the “unity of his thought, which was a great condition for the life of a thinker.”19 Comte’s paranoia was also at work. He claimed that people had been demanding the book for years and if he did not write it, some mathematical “hacks,” who were “lying in wait,” might make some “hasty, bad compilation” of his lessons in order to make money.20 As reflected in his denunciations of plagiarists throughout the Cours, Comte believed ever since his break-up with Henri Saint-Simon that his ideas were so valuable that people were constantly conspiring to steal them from him. The truth is that Comte himself wanted to profit from publishing a new mathematical textbook that targeted students who had little background in the subject and others who were eager to learn but had no teacher.21 As his wife, Caroline Massin, pointed out, students and professors would eagerly buy the book to help prepare for the admissions test for the Ecole Polytechnique. She figured that at least six to eight hundred copies would be sold each year, bringing him eventually twenty thousand francs.22 Comte also wrote the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique to prove his didactic prowess and to regenerate the teaching of mathematics in France, which mired students in a “disastrous scholastic 18

19 20 21

22

Comte to Valat, January 5, 1840, CG, 1:332. See also the document, “Institution Laville: Programme du Cours de Mr . Ate . Comte, 1836,” Archives of the Maison d’Auguste Comte, Paris [hereafter MAC]. At the end of the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, Comte appended the detailed description of the twenty-five lessons on advanced algebra and the thirty-one lessons on differential calculus that he gave at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1836 and every year at the Institut Laville. Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, vii. Comte to Valat, September 8, 1824, CG, 1:121. Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, November 4, 1842, CG, 2:103. Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, vi. Students did seem to use this book to study. A copy in the library at California State University, Northridge contains a student’s small notebook of mathematical formulas pasted to pages 268 and 269. Massin to Comte, November 3, 1842, MAC.

20

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

routine.”23 In this way, he hoped to strengthen his own position at the Ecole Polytechnique and increase his influence over the students, who he believed were a potentially important source of support.24 He was certain they appreciated him. As he had repeated in every application he made for a chair in mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique, he believed his teaching abilities were far superior to those of the full-time professors at the school. This treatise, he claimed, would show everyone the influence that the “philosophical spirit” could have on “scientific instruction.”25 In his opinion, geometry represented both scientifically and logically the first initiation into philosophical thinking. Geometers, however, worked in a vacuum. They were so negligent of philosophy that they did not even completely grasp the impact of Descartes’ work on their own science. He would show them how to teach geometry, especially analytical geometry, which he considered “the most important, the most difficult, and the most imperfect in terms of mathematical initiation.”26 Considering that Descartes was the founder of analytical geometry, Comte in effect wanted to pay homage to the philosopher whom he considered one of his most important predecessors. As one scholar has noted, Descartes was “the first systematic positivist, in mathematics as in philosophy.”27 The second book that Comte planned to write was a treatise on astronomy, which would derive from his course on this subject. The purpose of the course was to “initiate . . . the reason of the common people into the true spirit of philosophy” and into the “scientific spirit,” especially the scientific method, which was most purely displayed in astronomy.28 As with the work on geometry, Comte wished to use the book on astronomy to prove that he was a committed and original teacher, one who was devoted to popularizing scientific knowledge. He was, in a sense, challenging Arago, who had been giving a course on astronomy in the amphitheater of the Observatory to large crowds since 1812 and had published in 1836 Lec¸ons d’astronomie, which had gone through several editions.29 Sensing rivalry with him and other popularizers of this science, which was 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, viii. See also Comte to Valat, January 5, 1840, CG: 1:332. Comte to Mill, February 27, 1843, CG, 2:137. Comte to Mill, November 5, 1842, CG, 2:106. Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, vi. Fr´ed´eric de Buzon, “Auguste Comte, Le Cogito et la modernit´e,” Revue de Synth`ese 112 ( January–March 1991): 62. Comte to Vieillard, January 13, 1849, CG, 5:3, 4. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “Auguste Comte, la science populaire d’un philosophe,” Corpus: Revue de philosophie, no. 4 (1987): 143.

Comte’s Three Projects

21

all the rage in the early nineteenth century, Comte hoped his Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire would become the model of “the scientific instruction of the masses.”30 Popular education was important because it helped create an intellectual consensus, the necessary foundation of a “true social system.”31 Unlike many other lecturers, he wanted to popularize science not for its own sake but to bring up broader philosophical issues and ultimately to reform society.32 Interested in the formation of his students, many of whom were workers, Comte was happy to have the time to comply with their repeated request that he write up his astronomy lectures.33 He also believed that the workers, like the young students at the Ecole Polytechnique, were the natural supporters of positivism, which held the key to resolving class conflict because it sought to incorporate the proletarians into society. With the proper scientific background, they would make good converts. Auguste Francelle, a clockmaker, affirmed that the positive philosophy was already the “object” of all his “thoughts” and his “only spiritual nourishment” after losing his faith in Catholicism.34 Comte took his questions seriously and gave him all sorts of advice. Francelle told him, “[You are] as generous as you are illustrious. I cannot tell you how many times your sublime philosophy transports me, how many times it makes me dream, and how much it makes you loved. How is it possible for someone not to recognize you as a master and not to glory in being your disciple?”35 Comte’s phrase that “intellectual wisdom must one day be popularized” made his “heart vibrate” with joy. Francelle thanked Comte for working “to enlighten humanity.”36 Such enthusiasm boosted Comte’s confidence that he could acquire the support of other workers. The third work he intended to publish was an essay on the Ecole Polytechnique. Like the other two works, this one reflects his interest in teaching, for he wished to apply his philosophy of positivism to regenerate the “great positive school.” He was proud to be a former student of the Ecole Polytechnique and one of its teachers and admissions examiners, especially because it represented the “first kernel of 30 31 32 33 34

35

Comte to Mill, November 5, 1842, CG, 2:106. Comte to Mill, May 1, 1844, CG, 2:247. Bensaude-Vincent, “Auguste Comte,” 148–9. Comte to Valat, October 27, 1842, CG, 2:100. Auguste Francelle to Comte, July 30, 1842, MAC. Francelle was close to Lenoir, who was one of Comte’s oldest friends. He had learned to read and write at a school run by monks, but when he was twelve, he lost his faith in God. He became entranced by Baron Paul Henri d’Holbach’s atheistic system and the sciences. What he found most difficult to accept in Comte’s philosophy was the requirement that he give up the search for the “origin and essence of all things.” See Francelle to Comte, July 2, 1840, MAC. See also Francelle to Comte, June 14, 1840; September 16, 1849, MAC. Francelle to Comte, July 30, 1842, MAC. 36 Francelle to Comte, July 2, 1840.

22

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

a true speculative corporation.”37 But he found the “conception” of this institution too “vague and confusing.”38 Because the school prepared students for careers in public service, it should not make them specialize in one science or stress the rote memorization of “rarely applicable” abstract mathematical formulas. Instead, it should develop a curriculum of general studies, including courses in “the diverse political sciences,” which would inculcate “healthy logical habits.”39 If refounded along the lines of positivism, which favored understanding the interrelations of all the branches of natural philosophy and encouraged a devotion to the welfare of society, the Ecole Polytechnique would “exercise a great influence, both intellectual and social, on the great organic movement . . . in all of our Occident.”40 A recent scholar who has studied the Ecole Polytechnique in depth has pointed out that Comte was correct in underscoring the ossified, mediocre instruction of its professors, who were indeed too specialized; they gave lectures “without conviction” – lectures that students tended to skip.41 On the face of it, Comte’s three projects appear to be innocuous works, reflecting his interest in improving French education. Yet they must be seen in light of his provocative mood, already evident in his notorious preface to volume six of the Cours and his trial against Bachelier. In his preface, he had ascribed his failure to obtain a chair at the Ecole Polytechnique to power-hungry, egoistic scientists, who felt threatened by his philosophy. Besides Arago, he attacked mathematicians. Because the Academy of Sciences contained many doctors, physiologists, and naturalists, who were indifferent to the Ecole Polytechnique, the mathematicians in that organization often dominated the decision as to which candidates for vacant chairs were to be presented to the minister of war. In addition, some of the mathematicians in the Academy were also professors at the Ecole Polytechnique, where they sat on the Council of Instruction. They thus exerted an inordinate influence at the school. Feeling threatened, Comte maintained that mathematicians were particularly disgruntled with his view that every science had its own role to play in the scientific hierarchy and that prolonging or increasing the current domination of mathematics over the other sciences would hurt intellectual progress. In 37 38

39

40 41

Comte to Mill, July 22, 1842, CG, 2:58. Comte to Valat, November 22, 1843, CG, 2:216. See also Comte to the Pr´esident de l’Acad´emie des Sciences, July 13, 1840, CG, 1:347; Comte to the Pr´esident de l’Acad´emie des Sciences, September 19, 1836, CG, 1:265. Comte to G´en´eral de Rostolan, August 18, 1845, CG, 3:95. On Comte’s plan to reform the school, see Jean Dhombres, “L’Image ‘scientiste’ de l’Ecole Polytechnique,” in Belhoste, La Formation polytechnicienne, 286. Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:203. Belhoste, “Un Mod`ele a` l’´epreuve,” 26.

Comte’s Three Projects

23

his preface, Comte also complained that he should not be subject to reelection as admissions examiner every year, for he was too vulnerable to the wrath of the powerful relatives or friends of rejected applicants. (Appointed according to the rules of 1832, Comte was the only “temporary” admissions examiner, which meant that he had to be reelected annually. His three colleagues were “permanent examiners,” who had their positions for life because they had been appointed according to the rules of the old system.) Oppressed by the 1832 rules, Comte wanted the issue of his reelection settled once and for all, and after insulting the scientists for being driven by their base passions and prejudices against him, he dared them not to reelect him in 1843. If they reelected him examiner and r´ep´etiteur after having been subject to his withering criticisms, he could rest assured that his double position at the school was indeed permanent. If they failed to reelect him, they would prove the veracity of his criticisms. Comte aggressively pursued his case against the scientists in the trial against Bachelier, which he used to prove his moral and intellectual superiority.42 He now chose to write these three works to continue to provoke them. Each of the three new works challenged the scientific establishment in a different way. Besides implicitly accusing mathematicians of teaching their subject poorly, the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique suggested that individuals could learn mathematics in isolation on their own, without the aid of teachers hovering over them.43 As Jean Dhombres points out, Comte’s attitude went against the French educational tradition that people needed to be seated in classrooms with masters to initiate them into specialized knowledge, a process that could take years.44 Seeking to empower individuals to learn on their own, Comte wanted everyone to have an opportunity to imbibe scientific knowledge without intimidation. In addition, he defied the Ecole Polytechnique’s rule that the four admissions examiners could not write manuals helping students prepare for the entrance test. Antoine Reynaud, the examiner whom Comte had replaced at the Ecole Polytechnique, had been notorious for writing elementary textbooks to make money, and the rule had been created to prevent abuses in the future. Comte had had Reynaud as a r´ep´etiteur, knew this rule, and had even criticized other examiners for violating it. Only a few years before, in 1840, he explained to his good friend, Pierre Valat, that he could not publish his course at the Institut Laville as long as he remained an examiner because he would open himself up to “the reproach, so justly deserved by 42 43 44

Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, December 3, 1842, CG, 2:114. Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, vi. Jean Dhombres, “La Pratique philosophique des math´ematiques chez Auguste Comte: Une conceptualisation de l’espace par l’analytique,” in Auguste Comte et l’id´ee de science de l’homme, ed. Michel Bourdeau and Franc¸ois Chazel (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 25–6.

24

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

the other examiners, of using the influence of their functions to encourage the forced sale of their elementary treatises.” Because his position was already precarious, due to his being the only temporary examiner, he thought it best not to “expose” himself “to the least suspicion” in this domain. But two to three years later, “such scruples” vanished.45 Once again, he seemed to be deliberately daring the administration of the Ecole Polytechnique to fire him. His brochure criticizing this administration would only make his position in the school more tenuous. And the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, which advanced the atheistic position that had enraged the Catholic press in 1842, would fail to allay his colleagues’ suspicions that his philosophy was dangerous.46 In short, instead of resting as he was supposed to do in 1843 to preserve his health, Comte was searching for battles. Why was he so defiant at this time? Why did he not fear, as his wife did, the destitution that would result if he lost his job at the Ecole Polytechnique? It is clear that he took some sort of existential pleasure in this type of gambling. He explained at one point that in his “year of repose,” his “struggle” against Franc¸ois Arago (the main object of his wrath) and other scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique was “a happy diversion that makes me feel [my] existence more acutely.”47 Comte’s apparently self-destructive actions may also be better understood if one remembers that he was profoundly marked by his seven-year association with Henri Saint-Simon. In 1802, Saint-Simon had written in the Lettres d’un habitant de Gen`eve a` ses contemporains that geniuses, the enlightened members of society who serve humanity, should be supported by a subscription fund to enable them to work without worrying about poverty and political persecution.48 Repeated in several of Saint-Simon’s other works, such as the Lettre aux europ´eens, this idea was taken up by Comte as early as 1817; he wrote in L’Industrie, Saint-Simon’s journal, that “the great producers,” members of the “rich class of society,” should give part of “their capital” to “poor, but honest scholars” who, motivated by their “love of Humanity,” did not want to “dirty their pen” by having to 45

46 47 48

Comte to Valat, January 5, 1840, CG, 1:332. Also, in 1818, when he worked in a boarding school, Comte had been forced to teach from Antoine Reynaud’s textbooks and complained about their mediocre quality. Comte to Valat, November 17, 1818, CG, 1:45–6; Comte to Valat, September 24, 1819, CG, 1:54; Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1:132–3. Letters from Coriolis to his cousin Madame Benoist, written from August 26 to August 31, 1842, MAC. Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, December 3, 1842, CG, 1:114. [Claude-Henri de] Saint-Simon, Lettres d’un habitant de Gen`eve a` ses contemporains, in Oeuvres de Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, 6 vols. (Paris: Anthropos, 1966), vol. 1, part 1:9, 13, 14.

´ ementaire de G´eom´etrie Analytique Trait´e El´ 25 49 work for people opposed to progress. In the Cours, Comte had also referred to this idea; he explained that “public munificence” would have to protect thinkers as their work became more general, abstract, and abstruse.50 This principle seemed to be endorsed by Mill, who wrote on March 22, 1842, that if Comte were unjustly persecuted by his scientific colleagues, “all impartial persons” would sympathize with him, and they could compensate him for his material loss.51 Imagining that Mill was ready to help him and having appealed to the public for support in his preface, Comte may have sought to lose his position so that he could be subsidized. Reliance on other people’s generosity was not a source of shame to Comte, but rather the distinguishing mark of the positive philosopher. Moreover, now that the Cours, which provided a firm foundation for his theories, was completed, he was ready to alternate “speculative life” with “active life.”52 Waging these battles against the Ecole Polytechnique and the scientific establishment in general was his form of activism, but he yearned for the greater freedom and time a subsidy would give him. He knew deep down that without a tenured position, he could not teach in one of the premier schools of science in the world and at the same time criticize the scientific and educational establishment in an unrestrained manner. trait e´ e´ l e´ me ntaire de g e´ om e´ trie analytique Angered by Bachelier’s betrayal in regard to the Cours, Comte sought another publisher before he began to write. On November 1, 1842, he signed a contract with Carillian-Goeury et Victor Dalmont, a publishing firm that worked with professors at the Ecole des Ponts et Chauss´ees. It agreed to publish 1,200 copies of the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique and to pay him 1,200 francs. To avoid the dangers of stress to his mental well-being, Comte insisted on not being pressured by any deadline.53 49

50 52 53

Comte, “Programme d’un concours pour une nouvelle encyclop´edie,” in Ecrits de jeunesse 1816–1828: Suivis du M´emoire sur la cosmogonie de Laplace 1835 , ed. Paulo E. de Berrˆedo Carneiro and Pierre Arnaud (Paris: Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 1970) [hereafter, this work will be cited as Ecrits], 48, 49. See also Saint-Simon, Lettre aux europ´eens, in Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, Lettres d’un habitant de Gen`eve a` ses contemporains [1803], r´eimprim´ees conform´ement a` l’´edition originale et suivies de deux documents in´edits – Lettre aux europ´eens [Essai sur l’organisation sociale], ed. Alfred Pereire (Paris: F´elix Alcan, 1925), 87–93. Cours, 2:679. 51 Mill to Comte, March 22, 1842, CG, 2:353. Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, December 3, 1842, CG, 1:114. Contract between Comte and Carillian-Goeury et Victor Dalmont, November 1, 1842, MAC. See also Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, November 2, 1842, CG, 1:102.

26

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

Satisfied by the arrangements, he began writing on November 2, 1842, when the new school year started at the Institut Laville. Each week he wrote up the four lessons he had given the preceding week. Although composing this treatise was supposed to be a diversion for him, he found it tedious and mechanical. As shown in his aversion in the 1830s to writing specialized works on mathematics to gain entry into the Academy of Sciences, he did not enjoy purely academic work. Like the paper he gave in 1835 on Pierre-Simon Laplace’s nebular hypothesis, the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique represented a “boring voyage into a sad country” – “the country of pedants.” He realized that the new rules of professionalization required a solid record of research and teaching. His research paper on Laplace had been a flop. The Cours was too philosophical and did not help support his stature as a mathematician, which was further weakened by the fact that he lacked a higher degree because he had been expelled from the Ecole Polytechnique for insubordination in 1816. So he decided to write this textbook to meet the scientists partly on their own ground by displaying his teaching qualifications. He hoped this compromise would sufficiently strengthen his position so that he would never have to experience such “classic drudgery” again.54 While writing the treatise, Comte led a more sedentary life than usual. He no longer took long walks around Paris, his “large study,” because he was not meditating on weighty philosophical questions. When he finished the book in late February 1843, he complained that lack of exercise had upset his digestion and therefore his sleep. He reproached himself for having risked his health and expended his precious energy on such a “secondary work,” considering that he had so many other important books to write before the onset of senility.55 Nevertheless, he took pride in his treatise’s unified structure, its exploration of the essential harmony between the abstract and concrete in mathematics, and its detailed table of contents, where he explained systematically what was contained in each of the 168 paragraphs of the book to help confused students find immediate assistance.56 To direct future mathematical research, Comte also added his reflections on the philosophy of mathematics, showing areas of the 54

55 56

Comte to Mill, February 27, 1843, CG, 1:137–8. See also Comte to Valat, October 27, 1842, CG, 1:100; Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, November 4, 1842, CG, 1:102; Comte to Valat, December 13, 1842, CG, 1:118. On professionalization, see Fox, “Science, the University, and the State,” 66–7. Comte to Mill, February 27, 1843, CG, 1:137. Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, vii. Comte was particularly pleased with his outline of what he called “comparative geometry,” a “new aspect” of geometry inspired by the model of biology. It studied geometrical “families” of similar forms, such as rectilinear shapes, and seemed to partake of his contemporaries’ eagerness to classify. Comte to Mill, March 25, 1843, CG, 1:144; Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, 535. See also Comte to Mill, May 13, 1843, CG, 2:157.

´ ementaire de G´eom´etrie Analytique Trait´e El´

27

study that he thought were fruitful and those that he thought were sterile. (He had mused about writing something on the philosophy of mathematics as early as 1819, when he contemplated reforming pedagogy a few years after his expulsion from the Ecole Polytechnique.)57 As was his wont, he was eager to shed light on the history of science and thus often commented on the progress of mathematics. As Jean Dhombres points out, “Before W. Dilthey, and with a vigor that the latter recognized, . . . [Comte] historicized mathematical concepts and practices.”58 The Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique appeared in March 1843. Comte sent the work to his father, wife, friends (such as Mill), colleagues, the Ecole Polytechnique, and Laville, who ran the preparatory school. He did not forget to send a copy to the Academy of Sciences, which he still hoped would one day accept him as a member.59 However, the book was merely a well-composed textbook, “without originality,” as one modern commentator put it. Comte knew a great deal about the discipline but did not contribute to its advancement.60 Nevertheless, the book sold very well in the beginning. Comte acknowledged that many students bought it in the hope of doing better on the admissions examinations for the Ecole Polytechnique that he gave in the summer and fall. He hoped his treatise would “sow some philosophical seeds” in their minds.61 Other people, besides students, commended him. Gabriel Lam´e, one of Comte’s oldest friends and a professor of physics at the Ecole Polytechnique, read the treatise with “pleasure.” He told Comte, “This publication must consolidate and extend the incontestable influence that you have had on polytechnical teaching; your new views have come to light for several years; they had been adopted, like all really useful ideas, but people have been often silent about the name of their author. Your new work fills this unjust lacuna.”62 A German doctor named Luch found it “truly distinguished.”63 He 57 58 59

60

61 62 63

See his notes in Ecrits, 491–572. See also Annie Petit, “Conflits et renouveau de la psychologie comtienne,” in Auguste Comte et l’id´ee de science de l’homme, 87. Dhombres, “La Pratique philosophique des math´ematiques,” 61. See also ibid., 59, 79, 80. “G´eom´etrie analytique: Liste des exemplaires distribu´es par Comte entre le 19 mars 1843 et le 16 mai 1850,” in packet labelled “Circulation of Comte’s Works,” MAC. The original manuscript of this work is in N.a.fr. 17909, Bibioth`eque Nationale. Maurice Boudot, “De l’Usurpation g´eom´etrique,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’´etranger, no. 4 (1985): 388. For more on this “elementary” treatise, see Jean Dhombres, “O`u observer la post´erit´e math´ematique d’Auguste Comte,” in Auguste Comte aujourd’hui: Colloque de Cerisy (3–10 juillet 2001), ed. Michel Bourdeau, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, and Annie Petit (Paris: Kim´e, 2003), 33–5. Comte to Mill, March 25, 1843, CG, 1:145. Gabriel Lam´e to Comte, March 27, 1843, MAC. Dr. Luch to Comte, May 10, 1848, MAC.

28

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

insisted on translating it into German. Yet nothing came of his plan. The fact that the book was not republished for fifty years even in French suggests that it did not have a significant long-term impact on contemporaries.64 Perhaps, on the one hand, it was too abstruse as a textbook because it contained a hefty amount of mathematical philosophy; on the other hand, it may have frustrated philosophers of science because of the lengthy discussions of elementary geometry. the retort of the ecole polytechnique Comte intended to rest after completing the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, but after a month, he was disturbed by news of “active intrigues” against him at the Ecole Polytechnique.65 Although, during the trial against Bachelier, Claude-Louis Mathieu, a permanent examiner and Arago’s brother-in-law, had threatened to have him fired, Comte had been optimistic about his future at the school. He boasted that his “audacious preface” to the sixth volume of the Cours had frightened his colleagues to such an extent that they were careful to avoid all disagreement with him.66 Proudly adopting an “imposing attitude,” he assumed that they were treating him better because they recognized that his position at the school was growing more powerful.67 Thus he was surprised to learn in early April 1843, about a month after the publication of his Trait´e, that two mathematics professors, Joseph Liouville and Charles-Franc¸ois Sturm, were working to have him ousted. They were angry about Comte’s attacks on the Ecole Polytechnique and the Council of Instruction. In the infamous preface, Comte had complained that the Council wielded too much power, especially over the other employees of the school, who were often subject to “the most unjust animosities.” Reflecting the general incompetence of scientists, this “absurd” institution cowardly colluded in 1840 with the Academy of Sciences to prevent his appointment to a chair in mathematics at the school – the chair he believed was his “legitimate property.”68 Sturm had been the candidate who won the chair. Comte’s wrath over this loss had prompted him to write the brash preface. Deeply offended, Sturm had attended Comte’s trial against Bachelier.69 After hearing and reading Comte’s 64 65 66 67 68

It was republished in 1894 and has not been reissued since then. See Dhombres, “La Pratique philosophique des math´ematiques,” 33. Comte to Mill, May 16, 1843, CG, 2:150. Comte to Valat, October 27, 1842, CG, 2:99. Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, October 11, 1842, CG, 1:97. Cours, 2:470, 474. 69 Massin to Comte, December 23, 1842, MAC.

The Retort of the Ecole Polytechnique

29

harsh incriminations, neither he nor Liouville could tolerate Comte’s continued presence at the school. In addition, both scientists were upset because the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique implicitly condemned the way they taught mathematics.70 As previously explained, there were two committees that regulated matters at the school, the Council of Improvement and the Council of Instruction. The Council of Improvement comprised three professors, five examiners (usually professors) in charge of final graduation examinations, the director of studies (usually a professor), the commander of the school, the second-in-command, and thirteen outside members, including three members of the Academy of Sciences and ten functionaries from the public services (both civil and military) that recruited graduates from the Ecole Polytechnique. These twenty-four members ensured that the school’s instruction was relevant to the public services and was coordinated with the curricula of graduate schools, called schools of application. The Council of Instruction, which had jurisdiction over the curriculum, had only fifteen members. These included the commander of the school, the second-incommand, the director of studies, the librarian, the secretary, and the ten professors who taught at the school. Since 1832, the Council of Instruction and the Academy of Sciences had presented lists of candidates for teaching positions to the minister of war, who had the final say in the appointment. After a long, often political process, these two bodies usually ended up presenting the same candidates.71 Powerful scientists often conspired to appoint one of their prot´eg´es to a post by imposing him on the Council of Instruction or Academy or by pressuring a high government official. In the case of r´ep´etiteurs, a former student of a scientist was usually appointed as the first step in a scientific career. Often the scientist who taught the course designated the person whom he wished to have as his r´ep´etiteur. Comte had been appointed assistant r´ep´etiteur in 1832 thanks to his friendship with Henri Navier, who wanted his help in teaching analysis and mechanics. Navier died four years later and was replaced by Comte’s former classmate Jean-Marie Duhamel. In 1838, Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis, who was the r´ep´etiteur for Duhamel’s course, became director of studies. Comte finally was promoted to take Coriolis’s place. In 1840, when Duhamel became an examiner of the graduating students, Comte had hoped to replace him as professor. Yet Sturm was instead named to fill this vacant chair of analysis; he was a friend of 70

71

Joseph Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques: Auguste Comte et l’Ecole Polytechnique,” Revue des deux mondes 138 (December 1896): 543; Comte to Mill, June 29, 1843, CG, 2:170. Laffitte, “Carri`ere polytechnique d’Auguste Comte,” 311–2; Shinn, L’Ecole Polytechnique, 1794–1914, 43, 46; Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 51–3, 86, 94.

30

1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

Arago and a r´ep´etiteur for Liouville, who strongly lobbied for him.72 Liouville had been appointed over Comte to the post of temporary admissions examiner in 1835 and 1836, had attained the other chair of analysis in 1838, and had become a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1839. Comte considered Liouville to be Arago’s “principal auxiliary” and his “most redoubtable direct antagonist.”73 He was most eager for Comte’s ouster. Fortunately, Comte was r´ep´etiteur to the slightly lesser evil, Sturm. Comte portrayed Sturm and Liouville, the two professors who held the chair of analysis that he coveted, as his main enemies on the Council of Instruction. He had assumed in 1842 that they could not win over to their side more than two other members. Now instead, he heard that “weak and short-sighted” members were caving in to these “powerful” scientists and would give them their “passive cooperation.” Comte immediately ran to the minister of war, Marshal Nicolas Soult, who had jurisdiction over the Ecole Polytechnique.74 He was also president of the Council of Ministers, a post akin to prime minister. The previous year, when there had been complaints about Comte’s rejection of an applicant to the Ecole Polytechnique, Marshal Soult had defended him, commending his “impartiality and moderation” to the head of the school.75 In having denounced the leftist Arago and the Academy of Sciences in his preface to the Cours in 1842, Comte had unwittingly become an ally of the government, which wanted to extend its control over the Ecole Polytechnique and reduce the influence of the opposition in running the school. Comte now asked Soult to annul any hostile decision coming from the Council of Instruction.76 He also reluctantly begged various members for their support. By late April, he was sure he would receive a “striking majority” when the Council voted on his reappointment as temporary examiner.77 Yet the Council of Instruction was angry with Soult. In 1842, right before the publication of Comte’s infamous preface, Soult had objected to the Council’s nomination of a single candidate to the position of drawing teacher. Citing the need for a contest, Soult insisted on choosing from a list of candidates as he did for vacant 72 73 74 75

76 77

Pickering, Comte, 1:495–503; Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 86, 94–5. Comte to Mill, August 23, 1844, CG, 2: 276. For background on Soult, see Nicole Gotteri, Soult: Mar´echal d’Empire et l’homme d’´etat (Besanc¸on: La Manufacture, 1993). It seems that the candidate, named Rocher, did not appear for his examination. Letter from Mar´echal Soult, Minister of War, to the General Commander of the Ecole Polytechnique, August 19, 1842, Dossier A. Comte, Archives of the Ecole Polytechnique [hereafter EP]. Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 95; Peter Hayman, Soult: Napoleon’s Maligned Marshall (London: Arms and Armour, 1990), 259. Comte to Mill, May 16, 1843, CG, 2:150.

The Retort of the Ecole Polytechnique

31

academic chairs. He would not ratify the Council’s choice until he received such a list.78 The Council was still smarting from this insult. When the Council met on April 28, 1843, about a month after the appearance of the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, several members objected to Comte’s reelection as examiner, pointing out that “the terms” he had used to describe the Council in his personal preface were very “improper.” Other members, presumably Comte’s supporters, retorted that what was at issue was not his “misplaced expressions” in the preface but “his manner of examining.” In reply, some members of the Council suggested that Comte’s new treatise on geometry cast “doubts on his aptitude” as examiner because it showed that his knowledge of mathematics was poor.79 Unable after much argument to arrive at a decision, the Council concluded that it needed a better idea of Comte’s qualifications and appointed a special committee consisting of Coriolis (director of studies), Lam´e (professor of physics), Chasles (professor of geodesy),80 Sturm (professor of analysis and mechanics), and Charles Leroy (professor of descriptive geometry). They were to give the next month a report on the Cours and the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique. When Comte heard about the result of the April meeting, he was disheartened that no vote had been taken and that his friends had defended him with so little energy. For example, L´eonce Reynaud, the professor of architecture, said he was willing to support Comte but missed the meeting.81 Sturm’s presence on the special committee worried Comte. Nevertheless, he was happy that two committee members were Coriolis and Lam´e, whom he considered his principal supporters in the Council. Coriolis had voted in 1840 for Sturm as professor of analysis because Comte’s atheism offended him. Yet perhaps because Coriolis shared Comte’s interest in reforming the school to make its teaching less abstract, he respected him and treated him well.82 Lam´e was one of Comte’s oldest friends and had on numerous occasions defended Comte in the Council, where he boasted that he refused to yield to 78 79 80

81 82

Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 95. Minutes of the meeting of April 28, 1843, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Chasles, who replaced Savary in 1841, was relatively supportive of Comte and frequently sent him autographed copies of books that he had written. He also sent him fifty francs in 1854, 1855, 1856, and 1857. See “Liste des livres d´edicac´es a` Auguste Comte,” MAC; Comte to Chasles, April 9, 1848, CG, 4:147; notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, 1854, 1855, 1856,” MAC; notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, 1857,” MAC. L. Reynaud to Comte, April 28, 1843, MAC. The other Reynaud in this file is Jean Reynaud, not L´eonce. Belhoste, “Un Mod`ele a` l’´epreuve,” 2; Dhombres, “L’Image ‘scientiste,’” 287; Massin to Comte, September 26, 1842.

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the pressures of the dominating clique.83 But Lam´e was a bit peeved, for in 1842 Comte had given his nephew a poor grade on the admissions examination, complaining of his “mental weakness.”84 Perhaps trying to make amends for having prevented the boy from attending the Ecole Polytechnique, Comte acceded to Lam´e’s request for help with his career. In January 1843, Comte urged his friend, the scientist Henri Ducrotay de Blainville, to vote for Lam´e’s admission into the Academy of Sciences; Comte hoped that if he helped Lam´e become an Academician, Lam´e’s support for him would become more vigorous and more valuable.85 Lam´e’s bid succeeded, but whether he came to Comte’s rescue is unclear. When the Council of Instruction met again on May 12, 1843, the special committee read its report. Although in a letter to Comte, Lam´e had highly praised the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique and promised to defend it against any attacks, the report to which he contributed was by no means favorable.86 Instead of proving his teaching abilities, Comte’s textbook in the end discredited him.The committee found the work badly written, full of errors, and poorly conceived as a teaching manual.87 Besides concluding that Comte’s knowledge of the subject was superficial, the committee decided that in volume six of the Cours, especially in the preface, his references to the Council and to several Academicians were so insulting “that one could not accuse this Council of too much severity if it used its right not to renominate him.”88 Some of the most belligerent comments came from Paul Dubois, the literature professor, who Comte had suggested in the preface was simply a French grammar teacher and did not deserve to be part of the Council.89 83 84

85

86 87

88 89

Lam´e to Comte, January 26, 1843, MAC. See the examination of Lam´e-Fleury, in the Examination Packet of 1842, MAC. For Lam´e’s annoyance, see Massin to Comte, December 8, 1842 and February 10, 1843, MAC. Coriolis to Madame Benoist, written from August 26 to August 31, 1842, MAC; Lam´e to Comte, October 19, 1842 and January 26, 1843, MAC; Comte to Blainville, January 27, 1843, CG, 2:135; Comte to Lam´e, January 28, 1843, carton I, Archives Bertrand, Acad´emie des Sciences. This letter from Comte to Lam´e is not published in CG. It may be found in Larizza, “Alcune Lettere,” 411–12. Lam´e to Comte, March 27, 1843, MAC. Pierre Laffitte later explained that Bertrand had found an error relating to Comte’s discussion of conic vectors. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” January 20, 1847, MAC. Minutes of the meeting of May 12, 1843, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Cours, 2:470. Comte had solicited Dubois’ help for a job (the chair in calculus) in 1836 and perhaps was angry with him for not securing that position for him. See Comte to Dubois, September 25, 1836, CG, 1:272; Dubois to Comte, September 27, 1836, MAC. Dubois had been one of the founders of the liberal journal Le Globe in 1824. He was not particularly liked at the Ecole Polytechnique, for he lacked finesse, spoke poorly, and

The Retort of the Ecole Polytechnique

33

A three-hour debate ensued. Some members wanted to be able to investigate Comte’s examination methods more thoroughly, whereas others, perhaps Lam´e and Coriolis, objected that it would be cruel to fire Comte so suddenly. The majority of the committee members concluded that the complaints against Comte did not warrant his immediate replacement, and they recommended reconsidering his case the following year. The Council asked the special committee to present at the next meeting the list of qualified candidates it had to vote on to send to the minister of war. Comte was worried. With no savings to speak of, he knew if he lost this position as admissions examiner, which accounted for half of his income, he would experience grave material difficulties. Moreover, he recognized that he would then be deprived of his post as r´ep´etiteur because his “enemies” would consider it “dangerous” for him to be in daily contact with young people.90 The Institut Laville would fire him as well, for the director prized Comte’s connections to the Ecole Polytechnique more than his teaching abilities. His situation was also weak at the Institut Laville because the school had close ties to the Catholic, reactionary party and had never approved of his political views. If he lost all three jobs, he would have to resume giving private lessons, which would be a far more precarious and tiring way of earning his living. Because of his anxiety, Comte uncharacteristically listened to his friends in the Council, who advised him to campaign vigorously in his own behalf, especially with the undecided members. His effort was partly successful. When the special committee presented its recommendations to the Council on May 19, his name headed the list of five names. Yet his opponents on the committee again brought up the issue of his examination methods. They criticized him either for asking the students to do excessively difficult problems or for repeating too many questions, which gave an advantage to the last applicants, those in the provinces.91 Massin liked to point out the contradictions

90 91

gave dull, poorly prepared lectures. Comte dismissed him as a “terrible metaphysician,” Comte to Mill, May 16, 1843, CG, 2:151. On Dubois, see Paul Janet, “Le Globe de la Restauration,” Revue des deux mondes 34 (August 1, 1879): 481–512; E. Mercadier, “Histoire de l’enseignement de l’Ecole Polytechnique,” in Ecole Polytechnique, Livre du centenaire, 1794–1894, 3 vols. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1895), 1:59–60. Comte to Mill, May 16, 1843, CG, 2:152. As if responding to these criticisms, during his examination tour later in 1843, Comte did write down some questions that he felt he should delete and others that he decided to give only to strong students. During this tour, he gave 168 hours of examination in twenty-eight days for students in Paris and 82 examinations in fifteen days in the provinces. Each exam lasted fifty minutes. A study of his examinations reveals that he did repeat his questions, but not excessively. For example, questions about the Pythagorean theorem appeared often in 1840 but almost never in 1843. One must also wonder how he could avoid repeating questions, given the number of exams he had to give. For

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in their arguments. Comte could not be both hard and easy at the same time! 92 Comte’s supporters on the committee contended that he had done a good job as examiner for the past six years. The students he admitted performed as well at the Ecole Polytechnique as the ones examined by his colleagues. Then his opponents brought up other reasons to get rid of him. One member, possibly Sturm, argued that it was improper for Comte to be both an admissions examiner and a preparatory school teacher. He pointed to “the danger of the publication of works which are in a way imposed on the candidates.”93 Some of the members of the special committee favored the second candidate on the list (an assistant r´ep´etiteur) as a model of exemplary behavior because he agreed to resign as a preparatory school teacher if named examiner. One Council member – Liouville, according to Comte – expressed the hope that next year the post of examiner would be rotated so that it would be truly temporary, as it was supposed to be according to the rules of 1832. Supporting his argument, most of the members of the Council favored making one-year appointments beginning in 1844. Coriolis, the director of studies, was to inform Comte of their intention, although as Comte pointed out, “no formal vote” was taken.94 The Council then unanimously reelected Comte to his post as admissions examiner. Taking a perverse pleasure in the fact that it had taken the Council three “stormy sessions” to decide on his fate, Comte was grateful to Lam´e, Coriolis, and Duhamel for having defended him.95 Like Lam´e, Duhamel had been his classmate at the Ecole Polytechnique. Comte also thanked Poinsot, his former professor, who had worked hard on his behalf, despite having been lambasted in the Cours.96 Though initially pleased with the unanimous vote, Comte determined that Sturm, Liouville, and his other enemies had agreed to support him only because they had designs for a more “systematic and durable attack.”97 The plan to make his post a rotating, annual one was really meant to eliminate him. Comte correctly concluded that the Council was firing him indirectly.

92 93 94 95 96

97

example, he often asked students to simplify fractions – an exercise that seems perfectly reasonable because it is a basic mathematical operation. See folder entitled “Examinations et tourn´ees,” MAC. Massin to Comte, December 8, 1842, MAC. Minutes of the meeting of May 19, 1843, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Comte to the Mar´echal Duc de Dalmatie, Minister of War, January 25, 1844, CG, 2:230, 234. Comte to Barbot de Chement, May 26, 1843, CG, 2:159. Comte said that he would commend Poinsot in the second edition of the Cours, where he would complete his preface by relating the story of his struggle of 1843. Comte to Mill, May 28, 1843, CG, 2:163. Ibid., 162.

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Comte believed that this battle within the Council reflected a power struggle, one in which he would become a “victim” of his own philosophy because of its criticism of mathematicians for lording it over other scientists.98 In his mind, the preface, his examination methods, and the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique were false issues, used by his opponents to rally other members of the Council against him. Comte seems correct in recognizing their groping for pretexts to fire him. What he did not understand, however, is that his colleagues did not regard him highly enough to feel threatened by his philosophy. As reflected in his desire to publish the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique to show off his skills, Comte yearned for their respect. But at the same time, he could not get himself to do the required academic work to be included among the outstanding scientists of the age. He preferred to think of himself as a “pure philosopher,” who was vastly superior to scientists with their “huge” fortunes made from “very frivolous materials.”99 His colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique simply grew tired of his haughty, insulting behavior. What is surprising is that Comte expected that those whom he had vilified in public would treat him kindly.100 As a general said in 1930 in evaluating Comte’s career at the Ecole Polytechnique, it was more his “imperious character” than the “prejudices” inspired by “his doctrine” that caused his downfall.101 Unable to see what they were gaining in return for their irritation, his colleagues did indeed seek a roundabout way of letting him go. It could even be argued that they were being considerate in indirectly giving him a year’s notice. Comte refused to accept this warning. Instead, he condemned liberalism for giving too much authority to collective bodies, such as the Council; its members did not think independently and had no sense of personal responsibility when they voted. Such collective organizations should be limited to giving advice. Comte wished the school were run by a sort of enlightened dictator – “a single and responsible leader,” who was “honest” and “straightforward.” The minister of war was a good candidate for this position. Showing his general predilection for authoritarian solutions, Comte assumed that he would be treated better by such a person than by the “envious, narrow-minded, and cowardly members” of the pedantocracy.102 98 99 100 101 102

Comte to Mill, May 16, 1843, CG, 2:153. Comte to Valat, July 10, 1840, CG, 1:344; Comte to Valat, May 1, 1841, CG, 2:8. Mercadier, “Histoire de l’enseignement,” 65. General P. Alvin, speech for the “Centenaire de l’Institution de la Philosophie Positive,” June 22, 1930, in Comte’s dossier in EP. Comte to Mill, May 16, 1843, CG, 2:152–3. See also Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, 263; Comte to the Mar´echal Duc de Dalmatie, Minister of War, December 19, 1844, CG, 2:298.

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1843–1844: The Battle against the Pedantocracy

Little by little Comte convinced himself that the idea of rotating examiners would be abandoned by 1844.103 This delusion freed him to do once again what he pleased. Again, what is striking in his behavior is his defiance and lack of regard for his own well-being. Taking pride in his “courage,” he felt a deep need to act, even recklessly, in order to prove that his freedom of thought was not curtailed.104 In June 1843, about a month after he was reelected, he printed several hundred copies of the official judgment made in his favor against Bachelier, “the ignoble agent of Mr. Arago.”105 He sent these copies to various friends and acquaintances to keep “this strange incident” alive and to encourage discussion of his case.106 Despite his troubles at the Ecole Polytechnique, Comte kept dreaming of higher positions. He knew that the imminent death of Coriolis (the director of studies) would lead to a shift of positions, which might leave vacant one of the two chairs of analysis and mechanics – “my chair,” as he called it.107 (Comte had last applied for one of the chairs in 1840 and lost to Sturm.108 ) Before leaving on his examination tour in the fall of 1843, he informed the head of the school of his desire for this chair if it became available while he was away.109 Despite his problems and his awareness of his colleagues’ hatred for him, he was sure no one could offer him serious competition. Already someone who assumed Comte would attain the chair was maneuvering to take over his position as r´ep´etiteur.110 Acquiring this professorship was important for Comte, for it would increase not only his security and his entry into a privileged, powerful elite of notables in the capital but also his hold over “the elite of our youth,” the future converts to positivism.111 However, instead of being careful, Comte began to write his Discours sur l’Ecole polytechnique, which he considered to be “the most serious” and “most decisive” part of his battle against “the Arago coterie.”112 Massin argued in vain that in 103 104 105 106

107 109 110 111 112

Comte to Mill, May 28, 1843, CG, 2:163. Comte to Mill, October, 5, 1843, CG, 2:202. Comte to Barbot de Chement, May 26, 1843, CG, 2:159. See also Comte’s handwritten copy of the judgment, June 19, 1843, MAC. Comte to Mill, June 29, 1843, CG, 2:173. See Comte’s handwritten copy of the judgment, June 19, 1843, MAC. He sent several copies of the judgment to Mill so that he could distribute them in England. Comte to Mill, December 30, 1842, CG, 2:124. Comte wanted as many people as possible to know of the “cowardly violence” that had been committed against him and his philosophy. Ibid. See also Comte to Bordeaux, January 3, 1843, CG, 2:133. Comte to Mill, December 23, 1843, CG, 2:223. 108 See Pickering, Comte, 1:501. Comte to General Jean-Baptiste Gauldr´ee Boilleau, September 2, 1843, CG, 2:192. Hippolyte Colard to Comte, September 29, 1843, MAC. Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:202. On the status of the scientist in early nineteenth-century France, see Fox, “Science, the University, and the State,” 66–7. Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, December 3, 1842, CG, 2:114. See also Comte to Valat, November 22, 1843, CG, 2:216.

Offshoots of the Astronomy Course

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view of the fact that he was part of the school, he should communicate his ideas on reform privately to his superiors, not publicly: “You do not want to remain quiet. . . . It seems to me that you, who love order so much, are falling into anarchy and it is impossible that you are not aware of that. All the danger is in the publicity. It is thus war again.”113 But Comte countered that his essay would be “a powerful weapon.”114 Only in December 1843 did her words have the desired effect; he stopped work on it. By this point, Coriolis had died, and Comte reconsidered his approach to replacing him. The incendiary brochure on the Ecole Polytechnique was never published.115 offshoots of the astronomy cour se: discour s sur l’e sprit po sitif and trait e´ philo sophique d’astronomie populaire The year before, in December 1842, Comte had turned his attention to his third project, the publication of his lectures on astronomy, which he wearily considered boring “office work” on a par with the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique.116 For a time, he considered publishing only the opening lecture, which outlined the positive philosophy, discussed its intellectual significance, and explained its social goals. This opening discourse seemed to him the most interesting part of the lecture series, especially in 1843, when he was not writing anything philosophical. It seemed to him to be an effective means of developing and propagating his views.117 In January 1843, the opening lecture went on for almost four hours.118 In keeping with his defiant mood and his growing activism, he criticized the scientific establishment more than before.119 He also boldly reiterated the position that had brought him trouble in 1842: the possibility of separating morality from religion. In discussing the basis of morality, he seemed particularly interested in seeing how far he could go without incurring the wrath of the authorities, who allowed him to use the large lecture room on condition that he continue his scientific course for workers. Critical of reactionaries, who absurdly thought they could maintain both the political and intellectual status quos, Comte seemed to be working out a deal with the government in his mind. He reasoned that if the government gave his new positivist movement free 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

Massin to Comte, March 29, 1843, MAC. Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:203. There is no manuscript of the essay Comte began to write on the Ecole Polytechnique. Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, November 4, 1842, CG, 2:103. Comte to Mill, February 27, 1843, CG, 2:136. Comte to Mill, February 6, 1844, CG, 2:238. Comte to Mme Auguste Comte, December 3, 1842, CG, 2:114.

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rein in reforming people’s ideas and opinions, the movement would repay the government by supporting the political status quo. Since the 1820s, Comte had expressed the view that he was willing to refrain from attacking political institutions – the “temporal” sphere – because he was sure of gaining control of doctrines and opinions, which represented the “spiritual” part of society.120 This compromise, he claimed, was modeled on that worked out by his “predecessors,” the philosophes of the eighteenth century, who were supported by the monarchy despite their reformist philosophy because they offered “guarantees against immediate agitation.” Similarly, the positive school would give priority to “the purely philosophical movement” because at this stage in the Western “revolution,” political life was comparatively sterile and unimportant.121 The positive school could thus counter subversion and help maintain the material order while slyly devoting itself to the far more important work of establishing a new intellectual system. New doctrines would give rise to a new political structure.This position was one that Comte upheld fairly consistently for the rest of his life, often to the frustration of his disciples, who sometimes demanded more direct confrontation with the government. Through his bold opening lectures, Comte attempted to gauge the effectiveness of his approach. He would consider himself victorious if the government gave him “liberty of exposition and discussion,” especially the freedom to challenge the strong religious currents of the period and “the right” to spread his ideas.122 He had previously criticized demands for “liberty” and “rights,” although they had earlier been integral to the liberalism of his youth. Now he revived these terms to defend his system, implicitly attacking the government for its failure to respect these ideals. In a sense, he could not escape politics, though he pretended to be able to do so; his study of the French revolutionaries should have taught him that everything was ultimately political. Comte’s eagerness to create a sensation with his opening discourse again underscores his enjoyment of gambling, of pushing matters to the extreme. Knowing him well, Massin pleaded with him to avoid undue bravado.123 But Comte wanted to see whether the government would react to him, the “priests” and the “geometers” would unite against him, and the press would support him. He wanted his doctrine to have center stage. As he explained to Mill: “After having mentally constituted the new philosophy, I must at last take charge of its social 120 121 122 123

Comte to Valat, December 25, 1824, CG, 1:148. Comte to Mill, December 30, 1842, CG, 2:125. Auguste Comte, Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 99; Comte to Mill, December 30, 1842, CG, 2:126. Massin to Comte, January 21, 1843, MAC.

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installation and try to have it take its recognized place in the current struggles.”124 Comte’s “little social experiment” went well in 1843. Four hundred men and women of all ages came to hear his opening discourse. Most of the audience was bourgeois.125 Although his lecture went on for almost four hours and severely criticized theology, Comte claimed that no one expressed the least sign of “impatience or dissent” and that not a single auditor left the room.126 Most importantly, neither the religious journals nor the government authorities objected. Comte felt victorious. In February 1844, he decided to do the lecture again, but this time devoted four sessions to it instead of the “monster” one he did in 1843.127 In the audience were at least three hundred men and women of all classes, who applauded him with great enthusiasm.128 Because the opening discourse had become the heart of the astronomy course and he was eager to proselytize, he decided to publish it separately, though he still included it as the introductory part of the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire. He started writing it in December 1843, and after giving it as a lecture once again, he finished and published it in February 1844. It was a hundred-page pamphlet entitled Discours sur l’esprit positif.129 Reflecting his growing militancy, the essay was, in his words, “a sort of systematic manifesto of the new [positive] school.”130 Comte had four hundred copies printed by Carilian-Goeury et Victor Dalmont and distributed almost a hundred of them to select friends and acquaintances. He even sent a copy to Alexander von Humboldt.131 The Discours provided a summary of positivism for those who did not wish to read or were incapable of understanding the “six enormous volumes” of the Cours. What is significant is that less than two years after having completed the Cours, Comte already seemed to be having second thoughts about its value. In the same letter to Mill 124 125

126 127 128 129

130 131

Comte to Mill, December 30, 1842, CG, 2:126. Fabien Magnin, speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” RO 1, no. 4 (1878): 656. Magnin pointed out that during the course, an Englishman and his daughter were particularly noticeable in their enthusiasm for the new doctrine. Comte to Mill, February 27, 1843, CG, 2:139. Comte to Mill, February 6, 1844, CG, 2:238. [Hippolyte Phil´emon] Deroisin, Notes sur Auguste Comte par un de ses disciples (Paris: G. Cr`es, 1909), 3. See Comte’s note in the preface to the original manuscript of the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, February 1844, N.a.fr. 17910, p. 5, Biblioth`eque Nationale [hereafter BN]. Comte to Mill, February 6, 1844, CG, 2:238. On Comte’s militancy, see Annie Petit, “La Diffusion des savoirs comme devoir positiviste,” Romantisme 19, no. 65 (1989): 15. See the list of people to whom Comte sent the Discours in the MAC. Humboldt had long before, in 1824, expressed his admiration for Comte’s work.

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where he discussed the Discours, he explained that it had been necessary to publish the Cours in installments, for he had to “raise gradually the public, like myself, to the true final point of view of the new philosophy.” If all six volumes had been published simultaneously, the public would not have been “forced” to climb “this primitive ladder” with him. Instead, it would have read merely the last volumes, ruining his “plan of logical-scientific education.”132 Yet with the Discours, which represented a kind of shortcut to positivism, he seemed to acknowledge that his educational agenda was too difficult for others and had been necessary chiefly for him. Comte’s growing militancy made him more practical. Comte was particularly concerned about the intelligibility of his philosophy because he now more actively sought the support of the working masses. The Cours and Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique were aimed in different ways at the educated elite, whom he ironically called the “speculative mass.”133 The Discours, however, targeted the proletariat, for whom his astronomy lectures were written. It was, as Annie Petit aptly remarked, “a synthesis and an instrument of propaganda.”134 Although Comte’s audience consisted primarily of educated members of the bourgeoisie, the proletarian contingent was becoming more prominent. Before 1843, Comte had philosophical discussions with only Francelle and two other workers, a tailor and a printer. But one Sunday in the spring of 1843, Comte discovered in the first row of his audience a group of seven proletarians. They gave Comte the understanding that they could become converts and actively propagate his doctrines, doing more on his behalf than the bourgeoisie. One of the workers was the carpenter Fabien Magnin, who would become Comte’s principal working-class disciple. Magnin wrote, While we heard his friendly, ardent, and precise speech, . . . surprise and hope reflected in turn on our faces, [and] Auguste Comte understood very fast that a new element had been introduced in his audience. Without presumption on our part, it seemed to us that he kept our presence in mind, while we heard him frequently intersperse his lessons with moral and social reflections completely within our reach.

Soon, the group grew to fourteen members. By the end of the course, they felt “saved.”135 This experience, along with the growth of the 132 133 134 135

Comte to Mill, February 6, 1844, CG, 2:237. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie popularie, 85. Annie Petit, introduction to Discours sur l’esprit positif, by Auguste Comte (Paris: J. Vrin, 1995), 14. Fabien Magnin, “Discours de Fabien Magnin ouvrier Menuisier. A l’occasion du vingtet-uni`eme anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” in R. Paula Lopes, ed., Auguste Comte: Le Prol´etariat dans la soci´et´e moderne (Paris: Archives Positivistes, 1946), xxxviii.

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labor movement, no doubt led to Comte’s growing interest in the proletariat. Having all but given up on the scholarly world, which seemed to dismiss or neglect him, Comte was more than ever convinced that the ignorance of workers was an advantage; it meant that they were untainted by metaphysics, which infiltrated the “absurd” system of education unfairly reserved for the privileged few. Their “natural reason” protected them from the dangerous metaphysical principles spread by newspapers, novels, and plays.136 As Henri Gouhier pointed out, whereas Descartes had confidence in the capacities of the “honnˆete homme,” Comte trusted the “natural wisdom” of the proletarians.137 Because they were a kind of tabula rasa, they had the best chance of being properly initiated into the positive philosophy. The Discours offered them an excellent summary of the Cours. In one famous section, Comte defined “the positive” in simple terms, using six pairs of opposites: it designated “the real” as opposed to the “chimerical”; “the useful,” as opposed to the “pointless”; “certitude,” as opposed to “indecision”; “the precise” as opposed to “the vague”; the “organic” (with regard to the ability to organize), as opposed to the “negative” and destructive; and “the relative,” as opposed to “the absolute.”138 Partly because he had workers in mind, he stressed the concreteness and practicality inherent in positivism and the continuity and harmony between the positive spirit and universal common sense. The scientific spirit and common sense were similar; both had “the same experimental point of departure, the same goal of connecting and foreseeing, the same continual preoccupation with reality, [and] the same final objective of utility.” Positivism was in a sense the development of common sense, which was at the origin of every science because it guided its initial research; positivism made what was spontaneous, incoherent, and concrete in the workers more systematic, general, and abstract.139 In valorizing the common people’s qualities, Comte attempted to show how workers and positive philosophers could be allies in creating a new regime.140 Unlike the 136 138 139

140

Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 90, 98. 137 Gouhier, La Vie, 178. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 50–52. Comte repeated these characteristics in Comte, Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 96–7. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 53. Comte also wrote, “Science always constitutes a simple extension of common wisdom. It never really creates any essential doctrine. Its theories are limited to generalizing and coordinating the empirical insights of universal reason in order to give to them a consistency and development that they could never otherwise acquire.” Auguste Comte, Cat´echisme positiviste [hereafter Cat´echisme] (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), 133. Petit, introduction to Discours sur l’esprit positif, 24. See also Audiffrent to Comte, April 1, 1851, MAC. Audiffrent wrote, “Littr´e has said that science is the development of common sense; common sense is positivism. Its reign is thus not far away.”

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scientists, Comte did not endorse the study of the sciences for themselves. He wished to open up the scientific world to the people and to mobilize them so that they could make sure scientific studies did not foster excess specialization and indifference to social needs. The people’s ultimate good sense could rein in the scientists and their elitist academies. According to Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Comte believed that “to make science a public thing is to prepare the true revolution.”141 Elevating the people as the supreme tribunal in matters of science was a “remarkable reversal of values” in a country that prized specialization more than others did.142 As in the Cours, Comte sought to prove that positivism was better qualified than other parties and movements to create a new society, especially because it could best satisfy the apparently contradictory needs of order and progress. “For the new philosophy, order always constitutes the fundamental condition of progress, and reciprocally, progress becomes the necessary goal of order.”143 Order and progress would become the main slogan of the positivist movement in 1848, when Comte was even more hopeful of gaining the support of the workers, who were in revolt against the government. The Discours was, however, more than a mere repetition of the themes of the Cours. It showed that Comte was developing the ideas of humanity and morality that he had introduced at the end of the Cours and would further discuss in the Syst`eme. Massin, who was in the process of reading it in March 1844, wrote to Comte, “If I am not mistaken. there are many deductions that are altogether new to me, and I am obliged to go very slowly.”144 Elaborating on ideas expressed in the Cours, Comte emphasized that positivism unified human understanding in two ways, objectively and subjectively. Objectively, that is, in terms of “the external destination of our theories as exact representations of the real world,” it brought knowledge together to a certain extent by means of the positive, or scientific, method. Yet even though this method provided homogeneity when used in all branches of knowledge, it could not effect “a true scientific unity.”145 The objective world was too complicated for the weak 141

142

143 144 145

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent is correct in pointing out that Comte was at the same time an elitist, who was not eager to “abolish the distance between the amateur and professional.” There should be sharing of information, but a true “communion of minds” was “impossible.” See Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “L’Astronomie populaire, priorit´e philosophique et projet politique,” Revue de Synth`ese 112 ( January–March 1991): 56–7, 59. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “Comte et la diffusion des sciences,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, 1798–1998, ed. Annie Petit (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 134. On the French scientific world and specialization, see Crosland, Science under Control, 28, 68–72. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 64. Massin to Comte, March 10, 1844, MAC. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 34.

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human mind to be able to formulate one unifying law that would encompass all phenomena.146 Positivism achieved true unity chiefly in subjective terms, that is, in terms of the subject, not object, of thought. All theories were human in that the subject, that is, the being doing the thinking, was man, or, collectively, humanity. Our knowledge would become unified and systematized if all of it related ultimately to humanity and satisfied individual or social needs. To Comte, there was only “one science,” the science of humanity or society, to which all the others were connected.147 He was already close to formulating his famous “subjective method.” Implicitly criticizing his colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique and the professors at the Academy of Sciences, Comte also condemned specialization and “pure erudition” that prized “incoherent” facts and aimed at detailed studies. Rather than accumulating facts in a vain attempt to represent reality in an exact manner, a feat that would forever elude us, we should use facts and our ability to generalize and reason in order to build useful scientific laws or theories that related to our needs. Laws expressed the relations among facts in terms of their succession or similitude, that is, in time or space. “Thus the true positive spirit consists especially of seeing to foresee, of studying what is in order to determine what will be, according to the general dogma of the invariability of natural laws.” Laws were superior to observed facts, for they could direct our behavior, which should aim at improving the conditions of human existence as well as human nature. Subtly criticizing scientists, Comte insisted that even “the most eminent speculations” must have this “great practical destination.” He maintained that with its scientific laws, positivism could best transform the “milieu” by systematizing people’s action on society and nature, which included industrial development. In facilitating praxis, positivism could also improve human nature – within limits – by stimulating intelligence and sociability, the two traits that distinguished humans from animals. Several years before meeting Clotilde de Vaux, Comte seemed to be preparing facets of a new religion by promoting a human-oriented outlook. He pointed out, One can . . . see how the preponderant notion of Humanity must necessarily create, in the positive state, a full mental systematization, at least equivalent to the one that the theological age had finally composed based on the grand conception of God, which was then so feebly replaced . . . during the metaphysical transition by the vague idea of Nature.148 146 148

Gouhier, La Vie, 179. 147 Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 34. Ibid., 27, 34–5, 38, 39, 72. See also Auguste Comte, Syst`eme de politique positive ou Trait´e du sociologie instituant la religion de l’Humanit´e, 4 vols. (Paris, 1851–4; 5th ed., identical

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This was the first and only time in the Discours that Comte capitalized the “h” in humanity, as though to underscore its legitimacy as a rival to God and Nature.149 Moving toward the establishment of a new religion, Comte was led by his theory of humanity to consider the issue of morality because a moral system was “the principal application of every true theory of humanity.” Having completed the system of ideas in the Cours, which was crucial for “intellectual communion,” he maintained that the time had come to systematize morality: “The final reorganization . . . must take place first in ideas and then proceed to morals [moeurs], and in the last place, to institutions.” Once intellectual consensus was complemented by “a sufficient conformity of feelings, and a certain convergence of interests,” there would be “universal association.”150 Having concluded that his positive philosophy was at last a system, which prepared for the systematization of morality, he now gave the Cours the more weighty title Syst`eme de philosophie positive.151 It seemed to fit better with his next book, Syst`eme de politique positive, which would cover morality. One of the purposes of the Discours was to demonstrate that morality, which had to do with sociability and the feelings, did not need the underpinning of theology to be effective. Indeed, Comte argued that his secular morality was superior to any divinity-oriented morality. Whereas in the Cours, Comte had been somewhat tolerant of theology, which he believed had played a fundamental role in the development of the intellect, he now was more critical, as if to disqualify all previous theological systems from dominating society in the future.152 He emphasized throughout the Discours that there was a “final incompatibility” between science and theology both in terms of method and doctrine.153 He carefully avoided the use of the term

149 150 151

152 153

to the first, Paris: Au Si`ege de la Soci´et´e Positiviste, 1929) [hereafter, this work will be cited as Syst`eme], vol. 4, “Appendice,” 144; Robert C. Scharff, Comte after Positivism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 9, 88. Petit, introduction to Discours sur l’esprit positif, 29. Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, 36; Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 36–7, 62, 69. Comte called himself the “Author of the Syst`eme de Philosophie positive” on the title page of the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique and the Discours sur l’esprit positif. He had been preoccupied with the systematic nature of his work since at least 1824, when he referred to his fundamental opuscule as the Syst`eme de politique positive. See also Comte’s worries about whether this title was justified in Comte to Blainville, February 27, 1826, in Auguste Comte, Correspondance in´edite d’Auguste Comte, 4 vols. (Paris, Au Si`ege de la Soci´et´e Positiviste, 1903), 1:19–20. Charles Bonnin, a good friend, assured him that the new title was legitimate. Bonnin to Comte, March 26, 1843, MAC. Petit, introduction to Discours sur l’esprit positif, 25. See also Annie Petit, “Des Sciences positives a` la politique positive,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Petit, 110. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 42.

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“religion,” as if to leave open the possibility of creating a new religion that would not be theological, that is, not based on a belief in one or more gods. One proof of positivism’s superiority to theology in his eyes was that the latter was no longer respected intellectually. In terms of method, the theological spirit sought to understand the origin and first and final causes of phenomena, which the positivist spirit found “inaccessible to human reason.” In terms of doctrine, theologians’ emphasis on divine will was contrary to scientists’ stress on invariable laws. Without these invariable laws, which allow foresight, there could be no human intervention. The scientific spirit was concerned with maximizing the possibility for human intervention because it considered the natural order imperfect and in need of constant modification. This scientific belief was opposite to the “providential optimism” of theology, which sought periodic assistance from the realm of the supernatural.154 Targeting his talk at the workers, Comte also showed that the development of modern industry, which was associated with the positive spirit and the concern to improve conditions on this earth, was inimical to theology with its preoccupation with salvation and the afterlife. Theology was discredited not only because its intellectual doctrines were antithetical to “modern reason,” but because its moral doctrines were weak and corrupt. Like the various branches of human knowledge, rules of conduct could be made rational; they could emanate from a solid scientific understanding of human nature and humanity. But theologians ruined morality by making people behave according to “chimerical considerations” and supernatural injunctions, which were increasingly suspect. When people lost their faith, they often turned completely against moral precepts, which the spiritual power could not defend. Moreover, in bowing to modern pressures and allowing individuals greater freedom of examination, theology stimulated or endorsed “anti-social aberrations” (i.e., protests against the family and property), which were promulgated by “subversive utopias” (e.g., Saint-Simonians, Fourierists).155 Comte insisted that it was “above all in the name of morality” that people had to work for the triumph of positivism, which could determine through the scientific study of human experience, the “influence – direct or indirect, private and public – of each act, habit, and penchant or feeling.” From these determinations, it could assemble the rules of conduct that could best ensure happiness and social harmony. Positivist conclusions regarding morality would be as “certain as those of geometry itself.”156 Thus like Jeremy Bentham with his hedonic calculus, Comte believed that moral rules could 154

Ibid., 43, 48.

155

Ibid., 69, 71, 76.

156

Ibid., 76.

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be determined in a straightforward, scientific manner. Problems of evaluating the complex results of acts, habits, and emotions did not concern him. Instead, Comte merely reasserted, as he did in the Cours, that the positive spirit would develop the social sentiment, the basis of morality. Unlike theology, which stressed the salvation of the individual, the positive spirit was social: “Man, strictly speaking, does not exist; only humanity can exist, since all our development is due to society.” Positivism would emphasize that each person was connected with humanity in both time and space. Once the prospect of an afterlife was eliminated with the disappearance of theology, people would develop their social feelings simply because sentiments of generosity, benevolence, and sympathy would give them much satisfaction and make them happy. “No longer being able to prolong themselves except by means of the species, individuals will be led therefore to incorporate themselves into it as completely as possible, by binding themselves to all collective existence, not only now, but also in the past, and especially future, in such a way as to make their lives more intense.” Comte’s celebration of the “identification” of the individual with humanity, which would develop sociability, was another indication of his movement toward the Religion of Humanity. He assumed that by developing the spirit of the whole, that is, humanity, positivism would stimulate the moral sentiment of duty. Also, intellectual life would strengthen rather than harm morality because all ideas would be linked and dominated by “the social point of view.” The opposition that had existed since the late Middle Ages between “intellectual needs and moral needs,” that is, between science and traditional religion, would finally disappear.157 Comte’s new aggressive outspokenness about the weakness of traditional religion shocked Massin. She told him that their mutual friend Armand Marrast, though personally in agreement with him, would never let his newspaper, Le National, include a word of praise for the Discours because it was far too atheistic and controversial. She begged him to make some sort of compromise, perhaps by putting in a good word about deism. Comte angrily refused.158 Besides expanding his ideas on morality and Humanity, Comte developed in the Discours his theory of class structure. He explained that with the organization of human action on nature in the modern period, there emerged “two distinct classes, very unequal in number, but equally indispensable.” One consisted of “entrepreneurs,” who directed the entire “operation,” and the other was composed of the “operators,” that is, the workers, who executed discrete activities 157

Ibid, 77, 80, 81.

158

Massin to Comte, March 14, 1844, MAC.

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without worrying about how they fit into the whole. Like Marx, who argued that one’s consciousness derived from one’s place in the economic system, Comte believed that a person’s work influenced his or her mental attitudes. The workers were in closer touch with nature and more sensitive to the concrete results of speculation than the entrepreneurs were. Their work was simpler and had clearer goals, faster results, and “more imperious conditions.” Once positivism penetrated “this vast social milieu,” the workers would be the most responsive to its teachings, especially because they were not ruined by a metaphysical education.159 For intellectual, political, moral, and social reasons, workers would flock to positivism. As in the Cours, Comte emphasized that the workers would be naturally drawn to the “contemplative class.” To a certain degree, he idealized the workers, though not in a condescending manner, and he sought out similarities between them and the positive philosophers.160 In contrast to the entrepreneurs, workers and philosophers did not care exclusively about money, tended not to be calculating and ambitious, had more leisure time and fewer worries, and sought more aesthetic diversions. The workers would be the natural supporters of the positive school chiefly because of their dissatisfaction with contemporary politics. Comte noted astutely that political debates were monopolized by the upper and middle classes, who sought power and wanted the lower classes to help them when political battles broke out. These wealthier members of society received assistance from philosophers and social reformers, such as Voltaire, Kant, and Saint-Simon, who insisted that the old theological moral precepts be inculcated in the people in the interest of social order, despite the fact that they were not demonstrable. Comte rejected this position as hypocritical. Aware of the new democratization of culture, he found it impossible to believe that the upper classes and their intellectual supporters could successfully keep a new secular moral system from the lower classes. But he showed his own ignorance and a disregard for the growing power of socialism in the 1840s when he claimed that the workers were bereft of views and goals of their own, indifferent to the metaphysicians’ stress on their rights, and uninterested in acquiring power for themselves. He wrote, “The nature of our civilization prevents evidently the proletarians from looking forward to, and even from desiring, any important participation in political power. . . . The people may be essentially interested only in the effective use of power, in whatever hands it resides, and not in its special 159 160

Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 91. Petit, introduction to Discours sur l’esprit positif, 26.

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conquest.”161 Comte naively assumed they would support positivism because of its moral agenda stressing people’s duties to humanity. In addition, Comte argued that workers would welcome positivism because it would emphasize the need to improve living conditions and would fulfill their “real social program,” which consisted of demands for “normal education” and “regular work.” He reserved further discussion of the right to work for the Syst`eme de politique positive, but he did discuss education. Comte believed that the lower classes needed a general education in the sciences, which would prepare them to understand positive philosophy. If the sciences were democratized, that is, allowed to seep into the lower classes instead of being considered the exclusive property of specialized scientists, Comte believed that there would develop a “vast” and “impartial” tribunal. Composed of “the mass of sensible men,” this tribunal would eliminate “false scientific opinions” and support philosophical work. Considering Comte’s pronounced elitist tendencies, this idea of a popular tribunal shows the extent of his anger at the scientists. He far preferred to put his trust in the people and their common sense than in his colleagues, who rejected him time after time. Common sense was not only a source of the positive spirit but a means of controlling scholars, who were often driven to extravagance by their lofty ambitions, abstractions, and isolation.162 Comte concluded his discussion of social structure by correlating the different classes and philosophical systems. He argued that theology suited only the “upper classes” because it prolonged their political dominance; metaphysics was embraced by the “middle classes,” which found it supportive of their ambition; and positivism was “destined” intellectually and socially for the proletarians. Only positive politics could constitute “popular politics.”163 Almost in spite of himself, Comte seemed to grasp the fact that the masses were about to take an important role in politics. He hoped to preempt socialism, whose appeal he attempted to dismiss. But Comte was not acting solely out of opportunism; his interest in the working class dated back to his youth, when he collaborated with Saint-Simon, whose ideas deeply influenced the aspiring socialists of the 1840s. After finishing the Discours, he was troubled by fatigue and stomach aches, no doubt brought on by his worries about his job, and he was forced to stop working.164 He could not begin thinking about the more mundane task of writing up his lectures on astronomy until July 1. He then rushed to complete the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire before his examinations began in late July. Writing a chapter 161 163

Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 95. 162 Ibid., 43, 86, 110. Ibid., 94, 98. 164 Comte to Mill, May 1, 1844, CG, 2:247.

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a day, Comte was proud that he had covered “all the essential notions of astronomy” in less than a month, something “which maybe never before had occurred.”165 Comprising both the Discours, which was called the “Discours pr´eliminaire,” and the lectures on astronomy, the book was published by Carilian-Goeury et Victor Dalmont in September 1844.166 One thousand copies were printed – two hundred less than the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique – and Comte was paid one thousand francs.167 Comte thought highly enough of it to send it to Humboldt, the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Berlin, and the naturalist Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The latter had been sent to spy on his course in 1842.168 In the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, Comte showed that astronomy, the first science to develop in a positive fashion, represented “the scientific spirit in its initial purity.”169 It studied the most general and simplest phenomena, those that caught the attention of everyone. Unlike mathematics, which taught pure reasoning, a characteristic of the metaphysical age, astronomy developed skills in observation, which was a leading attribute of the positive era.170 Astronomy was also important for inculcating in a broad range of people the “fundamental sentiment of the invariability of natural laws,” which opposed the theological reliance on supernatural wills. Thus one reason Comte stressed the importance of astronomy was that it powerfully demonstrated to the lower classes the “inevitable” collision between science and theology.171 Another major argument of the book was that astronomy must relate in some way to “man,” not the entire universe. Comte explained, “All our true studies are necessarily limited to our world, which, however, constitutes only a minimal element of the universe, whose exploration is essentially forbidden to us” because our idea of it is “too vague and indefinite.” Rejecting the position he took in his paper on Laplace, which discussed the motions of heavenly bodies, Comte declared that we will always remain ignorant of many cosmological laws. Astronomical phenomena should be studied only 165 166 167 168

169 170 171

Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:270. The original manuscript of the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, including the Discours, is in N.a.fr. 17910, BN. Contract between Comte and Carilian-Goeury et Victor Dalmont, January 27, 1844, MAC. See list of people to whom Comte sent the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire in the packet entitled “Circulation of Comte’s Works,” MAC. Also see Pickering, Comte, 1:541. Comte to Narcisse Vieillard, January 13, 1849, CG, 5:4. Bensaude-Vincent, “Auguste Comte,” 150. Comte was, in effect, trying to dethrone mathematics as the premier science. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 43.

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in so far as they relate to human needs. They must serve to refine our action on nature and improve our understanding of our own nature and conditions of existence. The “solar point of view” was “the highest [point of view] that we could and must attain.” Comte used astronomy to underscore his main argument that all of the sciences must relate to humanity so that our understanding could be unified. His restriction of astronomical research to the immediate solar system, that is, “the world,” reflects his practical approach, one that preferred concrete results to speculation about remote objects, whether they be gods or other planets. This approach was part of his plan to make people comfortable with the concept of the limits of knowledge. Comte never expressed a triumphalist view of the sciences. His book showed, especially in its historical parts, how scientific progress was tentative at best. Once the positive era began, scientists would be told what they could and could not study. The people, acting through positive philosophers, would have some say. Comte was willing to sacrifice intellectual curiosity for its own sake in order to gain greater certitude and clarity on a small scale and to make the sciences serve larger social ends. His position represents another jab at the “vicious,” arrogant scientific regime, whose “mediocre intellectual efforts” went into specialized, isolated research.172 He anticipated the problem of the politics of scientific research. How in the modern era should public policy shape the ends of science, especially as research becomes more expensive and depends at least in part on government subsidies?173 Perhaps Comte’s approach seems authoritarian, but it is in keeping with the realities of the modern era. Comte was pleased with the publication of the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, especially the philosophical introduction, that is, the “Discours pr´eliminaire.” He was particularly gratified that the government seemed to accept his compromise because the authorities gave him no trouble about his daring introduction. In 1845, he added another two introductory lectures, reflecting his desire to give purely philosophical ideas greater prominence in the course. He explained that in the new age of history, morality would be guided by positivist principles and all men would be brothers.174 He also took a “new public step.” In advertising his astronomy course in the newspapers, he mentioned specifically that he would devote six introductory lectures to the “philosophical preamble,” which he now considered part of 172

173 174

Ibid., 35, 481, 484. Bensaude-Vincent, “Auguste Comte,” 166. She also points out that Comte’s explanation of astronomy was difficult to understand. To Comte, popularization did not mean “dumbing down” the subject matter. Ibid., 164. Juliette Grange, Auguste Comte: La Politique et la science (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000), 10. For a description of the contents of Comte’s lectures, see d’Yenne to Comte, February 16, 1845, MAC.

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the “initiation” into positive philosophy itself.175 He also informed the authorities of his intentions and was pleased by their encouraging replies.176 But in truth, they had little reason to act, for in the Discours, he had repeatedly reassured them that he was working with them to preserve order and instructing the proletariat in the sciences to prevent the spread of “the metaphysical contagion” (e.g., the doctrine of popular sovereignty).177 In 1846, he expanded his introductory material on the positive spirit to twelve lectures, about half of the total number he gave.178 His “opening discourse” was taking over his course. Moreover, it was now his habit to speak without notes for three hours, instead of the usual two.179 Indeed, Comte boasted that he could keep the attention of his audience for “three big hours in a room without a fire.”180 By all accounts, he was a riveting speaker. comte’s lo ss of po sition While writing the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, Comte was preoccupied by his position at the Ecole Polytechnique. His wife reminded him to exercise greater caution than usual when he gave examinations on his tour because he would certainly be carefully scrutinized. She had always believed his antagonistic preface to the last volume of the Cours would cost him his job and that his enemies were waiting to trap him.181 Worried that his feeling of oppression was hurting the development of his ideas, Comte looked to the government for protection. Though dreaming of attaining Coriolis’s chair, he wanted in the short term to guarantee his position as admissions examiner. His condemnation of “pedantocratic utopias” and his offers to help maintain order in the Discours would, he assumed, please government officials.182 His main hope was that Soult, the minister of war, would appear as a kind of deus ex machina, saving him from his persecutors, who he believed were growing in number as his fame augmented. 175

176

177 178 179 180 181 182

Comte to Grote, February 27, 1845, CG, 2:328; Comte to Jacquier Eusice (this is the way the man signed his name), March 5, 1845, CG, 2:337. The Moniteur and the Journal des D´ebats publicized his course in 1846. See Comte to Lewes, January 28, 1847, CG, 4:101. Comte sent the Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire to the mayor of the third arrondissement and the minister of public instruction and told them to read the Discours. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 98. Comte to Mill, September 3, 1846, CG, 4:36. Coster to Comte, February 13, 1846, MAC. Comte to George Henry Lewes, March 20, 1847, CG, 4:107. Massin to Comte, September 9, 1842 and July 28, 1843, MAC. Comte to Mill, December 30, 1842, CG, 1:125.

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Comte may have felt that he could count on Soult because the minister of war was still engaged in a quarrel with the Ecole Polytechnique. More loyal to its revolutionary roots than to royalism, the school favored radical causes, and it had had several clashes with the government since 1815. Soult had already been instrumental in the dismissal of the student body in 1832. More disorders had led to the suspension of over a hundred students in 1834. On November 6, 1843, Soult issued a new ordinance, partly stimulated by the problem with the drawing teacher in 1842. The ordinance stated that when the position of director of studies or any teaching or examining position at the school became vacant, the Council of Instruction must give him a list of three candidates. The Academy of Sciences also had to present a list of three candidates. He would make the final choice. (Previously each of the two bodies had often submitted one candidate, thus severely limiting the government’s options.)183 Comte rejoiced at the news of this controversial ordinance, exclaiming that the minister obviously wanted “to temper this pedantocracy, which for ten years has produced so many deplorable abuses.”184 He was sure the story of his own problems earlier this year had contributed to the minister’s decision to reduce the influence of academic corporations. According to Comte, Arago’s coterie furiously objected to the new regulation. Arago was a leftist deputy in the chamber, and he and his liberal friends did not approve of this government interference. The ordinance also produced an outcry among leftist journalists, including Comte’s old friend Armand Marrast.185 By supporting the government, Comte placed himself in the conservative camp, a decision that would prove to be unwise. After Coriolis died in mid-September 1843, Arago’s coterie lobbied for the appointment of Liouville as the new director of studies to replace him. Liouville’s chances of obtaining this position of director of studies were small, especially because he was seen as a liberal ally of Arago.186 Arago still dominated the liberal coterie at the Ecole Polytechnique.187 However, if he did become director, Comte could apply once again for the chair of analysis, which Liouville had held 183

184 185 186

187

Jean-Pierre Callot, Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique (Paris, Charles Lavanzelle, 1982), 82– 3; H. A. C. Collingham, The July Monarchy: A Political History of France 1830–1848, ed. R. S. Alexander (London: Longman, 1988), 241; Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 96. Comte to Valat, November 22, 1843, CG, 2:215. Comte to Mill, August 23, 1844, CG, 2:276. Liouville’s democratic convictions were well known. In April 1848, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly. See Ren´e Taton, “Liouville, Joseph,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie, 16 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970–80), 8:381. Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 92–3.

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since 1838. Comte tormented himself, pondering every angle of the situation. Yet he worried most about the problems he might have in committee meetings regarding his present position.188 In late January 1844, Comte wrote Soult a long letter, begging him to make his post of admissions examiner permanent and to raise his salary. Comte gave his job great importance, likening it to a judgeship, which required “rare moral energy.” He argued that the Council of Instruction’s idea of making the position an annual one was unwise because it would be impossible each year to find sufficient candidates who had the requisite “intellectual and moral qualities.” Moreover, examiners, if elected for a one-year term, would always be inexperienced and would not take their responsibilities seriously. Finally, the proposed new system would heighten, not solve, the conflict-of-interest problem, for the new admissions examiners would inevitably find work as preparatory school teachers elsewhere to make ends meet. Addressing one issue brought up in the Council, Comte admitted that he disliked having two different positions. But the reason he gave was not that he felt that their incompatibility adversely affected his performance – an incompatibility that concerned the Council. Instead, he explained that he found himself in an uncomfortable position because his job at the Ecole Polytechnique made him superior to the other teachers at the Institut Laville, who resented him. (Laville had informed him that they generally did not like him.) Comte explained that the Council’s real motivation in this affair was not to perform a public service, for scientists were not interested in the welfare of the country. The Council wanted merely “to satisfy unworthy private passions,” especially those of Arago and his friends. Liouville, Arago’s associate, was allegedly pushing for Comte’s ouster in order to replace him with his own prot´eg´e – “one of his creatures.”189 Comte ended his letter to Soult by pointedly reminding him that he was favored by all three heads of the Ecole Polytechnique under whom he had worked: generals Henri-Alexis Tholos´e, Jean Baptiste Philibert Vaillant, and Jean-Baptiste Charles Gauldr´ee Boilleau.190 It is hard to gauge Soult’s reaction to Comte’s letter. Was he impressed by Comte’s case, seduced by his sycophantic phrases, or bored by an internecine battle typical of academic life? Most importantly, did he really care? After all, Comte was only a minor figure at the school. Yet it seems that Soult used Comte’s case to oppose the 188

189 190

When Comte was on his examination tour, Lenoir went to see Liouville, who told him he wanted to be director of studies. Lenoir informed Comte. See Lenoir to Comte, Octobre 14, 1843, MAC. Comte to the Mar´echal Duc de Dalmatie, Minister of War, January 25, 1844, CG, 2:231–4. See the favorable letter from Vaillant to Comte, April 7, 1843, MAC.

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Council and push forward his plan to give the Ecole Polytechnique another constitution.191 Like Comte, Soult, who had been one of Napoleon’s most successful and loyal generals, was a stern, serious man, who loved order and efficiency.192 He met with Comte briefly on January 30, and the two men shared their feelings of animosity toward “the Polytechnique pedantocracy” and Arago’s clique. In great confidence, Soult told him of his plan for a new constitution. Comte boasted that he was probably the only member of “the speculative class” to approve of Soult’s reforms.193 Even if the minister could not change the status of his job, Comte was sure his support would put an end to plots against him. But surely Comte was politically naive to think that his left-leaning colleagues would stop trying to get rid of him, particularly because he was allying himself with an unpopular regime. Moreover, Comte did not cease antagonizing them. His Discours appeared in February 1844. Reflecting the opinions he had planned to develop in his brochure on the Ecole Polytechnique, he was very critical of scientists, academies, and French education in general.194 As his wife pointed out, this work perhaps made more of an impact than anything that he had previously published.195 In March 1844, Comte found out that Liouville had lost to Duhamel (the permanent examiner) in the contest for director of studies.196 Although slightly disappointed that Liouville was not going to be vacating the chair in analysis, Comte was pleased that a friend, instead of an enemy, now occupied the powerful administrative position in a school run by “miserable pedants.”197 He now was so certain that he would not encounter any difficulties in being reelected to his old position that he intended not to campaign as he had in 1843. He felt confident that he could “allow a free course to the perilous experiment” that he had started in 1842.198 But there is evidence that he was becoming sloppy. One administrator admonished him in early 1844, complaining that he had given far fewer grades to students than the other r´ep´etiteurs had. Avoiding the burden of quizzing the students on the course material, he was not working as assiduously as he was supposed to.199 191 193 194 195 196 197 198 199

Pierre Arnaud, CG, 2:412nCCXXXVII. 192 Collingham, The July Monarchy, 40, 144. Comte to Mill, February 6, 1844, CG, 2:240. Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 84–9. Massin to Comte, March 10, 1844, MAC. Coriolis had died earlier that year. Comte outlined the politics to Pierre Valat in a letter of September 28, 1843, CG, 2:196. Comte to Blainville, May 28, 1844, CG, 2:255. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:263. See also Comte to Mill, May 1, 1844, CG, 2:252–3. Michel Jacques Laurent Germain Guillemain to Comte, January 9, 1844, MAC. Some of Comte’s examination questions and analyses of students’ responses are reproduced in Pierre Laffitte, ed., “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Auguste

Comte’s Loss of Position

55

In the meantime, the tense relationship between the Ecole Polytechnique and the government worsened. In March 1844, the students gave their support to a subscription begun by Armand Marrast’s republican journal, Le National, to present a sword of honor to Admiral Dupetit-Thouars. An ardent colonialist, Dupetit-Thouars had without authorization annexed and occupied Tahiti after the natives had revolted against the French protectorate established there in 1842. In doing so, he had chased their queen from the throne and insulted and expelled the English consul and missionary, George Pritchard, whom he accused of instigating the revolt. When the English government demanded reparations, Franc¸ois Guizot, the minister of foreign affairs, agreed to pay in order to avoid a war, which would lead to instability domestically. He returned Tahiti to its protectorate status and reprimanded Dupetit-Thouars for having taken possession of it. The opposition, including Arago and other republicans, many of whom tended to be Anglophobes, accused Guizot of cowardice in betraying French interests and avoiding war with the British. The Pritchard affair dominated politics for the next several years. The Ecole Polytechnique students considered Dupetit-Thouars a hero. Their support for the opposition exasperated the government, which confined them to their barracks for two weeks. Furious, the students sought an excuse to destroy the school. Soult, who ran the government along with Guizot, was not pleased and threatened to punish the students if they exhibited any more insolent behavior.200 Knowing her husband did not read the newspaper because of his regime of cerebral hygiene, Massin meticulously related the incident to Comte; she was sure that he would find that it smacked of “Saint-Simonian politics” in that the French seemed eager to increase their influence in developing countries. Making fun of the English missionaries, who were ever ready to preach and then enrich themselves, and mocking the Admiral, who was to receive a sword of honor for his troubles, she cleverly wrote, “I assure you that I find all this sad. Unlike you, I do not have the idea of posterity to shield me from what is happening right before my eyes; I cannot isolate myself, for I live only once.”201 Administrative appointments proved to be another bone of contention. On May 10, 1844, the Council of Instruction appointed a

200

201

Comte Examinateur d’admission a` l’Ecole Polytechnique,” RO, 2d ser., 11 (May 1895): 417–35. Soult was nominally in charge, whereas Guizot was in truth head of the cabinet. Philippe Darriulat, Les Patriotes: La Gauche r´epublicaine et la nation 1830–1870 (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 75; Fr´ed´eric Hulot, Le Mar´echal Soult (Paris: Flammarion/Pygmalion, 2003), 231; Collingham, The July Monarchy, 321, 322; Callot, Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique, 92; G[aston] Pinet, Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique (Paris: Librairie Polytechnique Baudry et Cie , 1887), 233. Massin to Comte, March 30, 1844, MAC.

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special committee composed of Sturm, Lam´e, and Leroy to present a list of candidates for admissions examiner. The records of the meeting do not explain why Comte was not perfunctorily reelected at this time.202 But there were apparently many complaints coming in from all parts of France about his examinations. One man complained that several students had not answered Comte’s examination questions “in a satisfying manner” but seemed certain of getting a good ranking. He scolded Comte directly: “People say that it’s enough simply to tell you stories and to flatter you to obtain it.”203 Others again pointed out that he was not changing his questions, which were commended as brilliant in the beginning of his career but now were routine. Lyc´ee students who were to be tested by Comte merely studied his previous exams and practiced their responses to make them seem genuinely spontaneous. Comte knew all about these practices but thought he could still pick out the good candidates and not be fooled. One graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique later wrote that Comte succeeded in making the students think they were being tested only on their mathematical analysis while he was in fact assessing their “memory, skill in abstraction or generalization, initiative, penetration, etc.”204 Yet the administration did not see the situation that way. It repeatedly accused Comte of making terrible errors in ranking students on the admissions list.205 Members of the faculty also brought up again the issue that Comte had broken the rule prohibiting teachers from publishing elementary works that could be used to study for exams.206 Sturm and Liouville now were joined by Michel Chasles and Lam´e in claiming to find the Trait´e de g´eom´etrie analytique to be full of embarrassing errors. Finally, after having been continually attacked by Comte, who claimed he should be exempt from the rule that he had to be reappointed every year, some members of the Council wondered about his mental health and reminded their colleagues 202 203 204 205

206

Minutes of the meeting of May 10, 1844, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Du- to Comte, n.d., MAC. Testimony of V. Pomey, cited in “Auguste Comte, Examinateur,” Bulletin Auguste Comte 1 ( June 1922): 336. Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques,” 543; idem, review of Auguste Comte, fondateur du positivisme, sa vie, sa doctrine, by R. P. Gruber, in Journal des savants (August 1892): 689. See also Bertrand to Laffitte, March 20, 1892, MAC. One of Comte’s admirers and friends, Colonel Dussaussoy, wrote to him August 30, 1844, acknowledging that there were many complaints about Comte’s exams. Yet he gave different reasons for these complaints: “I know that people reproach you for having an excessively scholarly manner of examining by asking problems which bad students might know by heart and very good ones might be ignorant of.” Dussaussoy believed Comte had done an excellent job in raising the standards of instruction because his exams forced students to apply immediately the principles they had learned in school. Dussaussoy to Comte, August 30, 1844, MAC. Comte simply said the rule did not apply to him and that he had never promised to abide by it. Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques,” 544.

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about his stint in an asylum in 1826.207 John Austin, who was residing in Paris, wrote to Mill, I fear, from what M. Dunoyer [Comte’s friend, the economist] told me, that there is a good deal of prejudice against Comte, as being a mere man of speculation, more intent upon impressing his own theories upon the students, than upon exactly performing the duties of his office. It is probable, too, that the fit of insanity under which he has suffered, coupled with the hostility of the men of science whom he has provoked, may have led to a general belief that he is half mad.208

Comte’s recent exalted claims to superiority gave rise to fears that it would be irresponsible to keep him on the faculty. A week later, the special committee gave the Council a list of five names, none of which was Comte’s. Surprised, one member of the Council asked why Comte’s name was omitted. Had the committee decided his examination methods were faulty or his impartiality impaired? These were the real issues. Yet the commission simply said that it had based its decision on the reasons brought up last year in the meeting of the Council, which had decided then not to reelect him in 1844. Evidence provided by the minutes of the official meeting suggest that the commission did not seriously consider Comte’s case in 1844. Everything had been decided in 1843, although no formal vote had been taken. Yet Comte’s supporter insisted that he be at least included on the final list of three candidates who were to be presented to the minister of war. Otherwise, Comte’s self-respect and ability to earn a living would be damaged. A heated discussion led to the postponement of the nomination of the candidates. On May 27, fourteen members of the Council of Instruction met. In the round of voting for the first candidate on the list, Comte received only three votes. And he received only two more votes, for a total of five, in each of the succeeding two rounds for the second and third candidates. The first candidate and eventual appointee was Pierre Wantzel, a brilliant young adjunct r´ep´etiteur of analysis, who never dreamed of supplanting his former teacher.209 Yet the fact that he had published in Liouville’s Journal de Math´ematiques undoubtedly helped him.210 The other two candidates were regular r´ep´etiteurs. 207 208

209 210

Ibid., 543. John Austin to John Stuart Mill, n.d., excerpt in The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1812–1848, ed. Francis Mineka, vol. 13 of Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1963), 653–4n5. Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques,” 537. J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, “Pierre Laurent Wantzel,” http://www-history. mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wantzel.html (accessed December 8, 2006).

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The next day, Duhamel informed Comte of the results.211 Though surprised and worried, Comte dramatized his situation, proudly declaring declared that he did not “fear” the “all-out war” desired by his enemies.212 The battle to him was philosophical. He figured that out of the nine hostile votes, one was from a person who was theological in outlook, several were metaphysicians, and the rest were mathematicians. All felt threatened by positivism and would do almost anything to eliminate him.213 He hoped his case would rally others against “the pedantocratic despotism” and in this way prove “useful to the public.”214 Caroline Massin wisely pointed out to Comte that pursuing the matter further would only irritate his enemies and create a “new scandal,” which would prove imprudent. The truth was that no one at the school really liked him, especially because of the damage he had done in his preface to the Cours. She begged him to be patient and self-controlled: “Deign to listen to me at least one time.”215 Heedless of her advice, Comte met with the minister on June 1 and personally gave him a letter that explained the situation. After complaining about the “odious persecution” of Liouville, who was acting under orders from Arago, Comte demanded an inquiry into the “corrupt practices” of the Council and urged Soult to intervene in his behalf. To boost his case, Comte pointed out that the three current “true heads” of the school – General Gauldr´ee Boilleau, Colonel Michel Jacques Laurent Germain Guillemain (the secondin-command), and Duhamel (the director of studies) – supported him; that the Council, motivated by personal passions, gave no reasons for omitting his name from the list of candidates; and that it was not fair that the new rule should begin with him. What he feared was that the public would think that all of a sudden after seven years of fine service, he was being fired for some grave infraction. His enemies were already telling “cowardly” lies about his mental illness as a way of hiding the true reason for their desire to fire him.216 Appealing to the minister’s authoritarian tendencies, Comte also reminded him that the unruly Council was usurping the government’s power to change ordinances and that the left-wing republican Arago was secretly gaining in strength. The state should seize the opportunity to take control of the school. 211 212 213 214 215 216

Duhamel to Comte, May 28, 1844, MAC. Comte to Maximilien Marie, May 28, 1844, CG, 2:254. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:264. Comte to Maximilien Marie, May 28, 1844, CG, 2:254. Massin to Comte, June 1, 1844, MAC. See also Massin to Comte, December 20, 1844, MAC. Comte to the Mar´echal Duc de Dalmatie, Minister of War, May 30, 1844, CG, 2:255; Comte to Blainville, May 28, 1844, CG, 2:255, 256; Guillemain to Comte, June 7, 1844, MAC.

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In response, Soult promised to do as much as he could and set up a commission to examine the case; it was headed by General Moline de Saint-Yon, the director of personnel.217 General Tholos´e, the former head of the Ecole Polytechnique and a friend of Soult, and Colonel Peronnier, who had been second-in-command, said they also would do everything possible to counter the injustice done to Comte.218 Moreover, although he disregarded many of Comte’s most punitive recommendations, Soult wrote a letter to the Council of Instruction, in which he asked the reasons for the absence of his name on the list of candidates. It seemed “unjust” and contrary to the goal of public service to fire someone who had done his job well for seven years. Had Comte done something wrong to merit such a fate? Repeating Comte’s argument, Soult made it clear that he did not approve of the Council’s plan to elect new people to temporary posts each year. The career of admissions examiner would then be opened to “a crowd of ambitious people.”219 The minister hinted that he thought the Council was deliberately punishing his own candidate to take revenge. He demanded a new list of candidates. A special meeting of the Council was called on June 27, 1844 to consider this letter. A committee made up of Duhamel, Dubois, and Leroy was told to draft a response, which was presented at another special meeting on July 1. They wrote the following, “The council believes that it is impossible to review the different motives which determined the votes of its members in the presentation it made of candidates for the post of admissions examiner.” Comte had always performed his duties with “loyalty and zeal,” but it was in the interest of “the examinations and teaching” not to reappoint him.220 Avoiding in particular the issue of Comte’s mental well-being, which it felt was inappropriate to make part of the public record, the Council’s reply to the minister was deliberately vague and evasive.221 The Council showed its pique by resubmitting to him the same list of candidates. Before the meeting adjourned, the members of the Council voted to insert into the minutes a statement alluding to the “painful surprise” Soult’s interference caused them.222 217 218

219

220

221 222

Comte to General d’Hautpoul, April 30, 1850, CG, 6:147. General Tholos´e to Comte, June 2, 1844; Peronnier to Comte, June 1, 1844, MAC. On Tholos´e, see Cosseron de Villenoisy, “Infanterie et cavalerie,” Ecole Polytechnique, Livre du centenaire, 2:301–3. Mar´echal Duc de Dalmatie, Minister of War, to the Council of Instruction, Ecole Polytechnique, June [?], 1844, in the Minutes of the meeting of June 27, 1844, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Proposed Draft of Letter from Council of Instruction to Mar´echal Duc de Dalmatie, Minister of War, in Minutes of the meeting of July 1, 1844, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques,” 544. Minutes of the meeting of July 1, 1844, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP.

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Comte was clearly caught in a political battle. His former classmate, Joseph L´eon Talabot, who was now a notable both in the Chamber of Deputies and in the metallurgy business, tried to help him but was taken aback by all the intrigue.223 Despite his earlier rift with Comte, Guizot, who was hated by the left, especially after the Pritchard affair, intervened and urged his colleague Soult to support Comte.224 In Comte’s words, Guizot supported him because he was “the only writer, who, in the scientific world, defends the just rights of the central government against pedantocratic ambitions.”225 But Comte later condemned Guizot for not doing more to help him, calling him a “miserable parvenu, or rather a pedant without a heart.”226 Comte did not fully recognize the complex political machinations at work in his case. The day before he was to begin giving examinations, Comte learned that his appeal to retain his position had failed. He accused the Council members of using the pretext of trying out a new system of changing examiners to hide their personal animosity toward him. To show his displeasure, Soult refused to appoint anyone in Comte’s place and named Wantzel only substitute-examiner to make sure someone gave the admissions examinations.227 Soult also wrote a letter to General Boilleau, praising Comte’s record as examiner and condemning the injustice of the Council. He could not understand how the Council could fire Comte after it agreed that he had done his job well.228 But nothing was done to help Comte. 223

224

225 226 227 228

Joseph L´eon Talabot to Comte, July 23, 1844, MAC. Talabot had flirted with SaintSimonianism in the 1820s. See Pickering, Comte, 1:417, 425, 430; Jean Lenoble, “Talabot (les fr`eres)” in Dictionnaire du Second Empire, ed. Jean Tulard (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 1235–6. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:266. Guizot was asked to intervene by John and Sarah Austin, close friends of Mill. When the Austins visited Paris, Mill had put them in touch with Comte, with whom they became very friendly. The Austins asked Guizot to intervene in July 1844 and then talked to him about Comte again in December 1844. To reinforce their case, they also alluded to Mill’s interest in Comte. Sarah Austin told Comte that Guizot supported him and promised to speak to the Minister of War in his behalf: “He spoke of you as one must.” Mrs. Austin to Comte, December 24, 1844, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (March 1900): 280. See also Comte to Mme Austin, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:273. The letter that Comte wrote to Sarah Austin on January 6, 1845 to tell her of the disappointing final results of Guizot’s “kindly intervention” is not published in CG. See Comte to Madame Austin, January 6, 1845, in “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (March 1900): 281. Also see J. S. Mill to Mrs. Austin, January 18, 1845 in Janet Ross, Three Generations of Englishwomen: Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs. John Taylor, Mrs. Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1888), 1:199. Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, CG, 2:306. Comte to Mill, September 3, 1846, CG, 4:35. See also Comte to Mill, December 18, 1845, CG, 3:246. See Wantzel’s Dossier, EP; minutes of the meeting of July 10, 1844, Registre: Proc`esVerbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:266. This must be the letter that Comte mentions in the Discours, 421. The letter, according to Comte, was dated July 15, 1844. See also

The Recourse to Mill

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Thus, Comte technically retained his title in 1844 but lost his salary of three thousand francs. His other job as r´ep´etiteur brought him only two thousand francs a year. (He also earned three thousand a year at the Institut Laville.)229 He sadly admitted that Soult had done everything legally possible for him. Nevertheless, his support as well as that of Boilleau gave Comte hope for the future.230 An opportunity for a redress of the situation would occur soon. Changing the time of year in which it elected admissions examiners, the Council declared that the next appointment would be made in November instead of the following May. With no savings and much of his yearly income gone, Comte would, in the meantime, have trouble making ends meet. He did not want to expend energy finding another position because he was sure he would get his regular job back. Nor did he seriously consider changing his own habits to reduce his expenses. He knew he could count on support from the only person besides himself he considered part of the spiritual power: John Stuart Mill. the recour se to mill Mill had initiated a correspondence with Comte in 1841 and had already offered to help him several times. In 1842, when Comte had contemplated writing the infamous “Personal Preface” and voiced his concern about possibly losing his job, Mill had encouraged him to go ahead with his plan, suggesting that he would take care of any problems that might arise. In June 1843, when Comte learned he had barely retained his job, Mill wrote, “Whatever future is reserved to you, all thought of real material distress is forbidden to you as long as I live and have a penny to share with you.”231 So when he lost his position in 1844, Comte immediately asked Mill for assistance. According to Comte’s theory of the separation of powers, members of the temporal power were the natural “patrons” of philosophers.232 Living in a country with more of a tradition of patronage than France had, Mill was assigned to find individuals who would loan Comte

229

230 231 232

Minutes of the meeting of July 17 1844, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. See letter from Comte to Marielle, November 6, 1848, Dossier A. Comte, EP. This letter is not reproduced in CG. On Comte’s three-thousand-franc salary, see Ch. Peronnier (Colonel, second-in-command at Ecole Polytechnique) to Comte, September 8, 1837. In his letter to Lewes, Comte claimed he lost five thousand francs of annual revenue, but this sum seems incorrect. See Comte to Lewes, October 15, 1848, CG, 4:196. Comte to John Austin, July 20, 1844, CG, 2:261–2. Mill to Comte, June 15, 1843, CG, 2:387. Comte to Mill, June 29, 1843, CG, 2:169.

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approximately six thousand francs. They were to be very wealthy men, preferably “true adherents,” so that he would not feel guilty about paying them back at his own “convenience.” He bluntly told Mill, “Gratitude has never weighed on me.”233 His attitude would soon alienate his colleague. Comte pressured Mill to seek help from George Grote. A historian, former member of Parliament, and one of Mill’s oldest and richest friends, Grote had met Comte in 1840 because of his interest in the Cours. Along with his wife, Harriet, Grote visited Comte whenever he came to Paris. They had stayed for a long time in Paris in 1844, when Comte became better acquainted with them. According to Harriet Grote, Comte’s “society afforded to Mr. Grote both pleasure and profit,” despite the fact that he was “uncouth” and “scarcely known to any one [sic] with whom we habitually mixed in Paris.”234 Her condescension could not have been clearer. As a banker by profession, Grote belonged to a higher social class than Comte. Comte recognized a tension in their relationship, which he attributed to his having insulted Grote by making derogatory comments about his writing.235 Uneasy about asking Grote directly for money, Comte had Mill do his dirty work. Within two days of receiving Comte’s letter, Mill secured three thousand francs (120 pounds) from Grote and shortly thereafter obtained an equivalent sum from his friends Sir William Molesworth and Raikes Currie. Molesworth was an agnostic, Philosophical Radical, and former member of Parliament. He and Grote had tried to build political alliances among reformers. Molesworth, who was working on a new edition of Hobbes, liked the Cours so much that he read it three times.236 Like Grote, Raikes Currie was a banker. He 233 234

235 236

Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:268–9. Harriet Grote, The Philosophical Radicals of 1832, Comprising the Life of Sir William Molesworth and the Incident Connected with the Reform Movement from 1832 to 1842 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1866), 71. See also George Grote to Comte, January 17, 1840; Harriet Grote to Comte, April 15, 1842 and April 13, 1844, MAC; Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:167. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:269; Mrs. [Harriet] Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote (London: John Murray, 1873), 158; Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:166. Harriet Grote was a good friend of Molesworth until the mid-1840s, when she disapproved of his marriage. She later wrote a book about him: The Philosophical Radicals of 1832, Comprising the Life of Sir William Molesworth and the Incident Connected with the Reform Movement from 1832 to 1842. When the Grotes were in Paris, Molesworth had her ask Comte for details about his philosophy. Grote, The Philosophical Radicals, 71; Harriet Grote to Comte, April 15, 1842, MAC; Mill to Comte, August 12, 1844, August 14, 1844, August 20, 1844, August 23, 1844, CG, 2:420-21; Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:168; Alison Adburgham, A Radical Aristocrat: The Rt Hon. Sir William Molesworth of Pencarrow and His Wife Andalusia (Padstow, Cornwall: Tabb House, 1990), 16–21. On Grote’s contributions and relationship with Molesworth, see M. L. Clarke,

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was also a member of the House of Commons. Both Molesworth and Currie fulfilled Comte’s criteria for donors: they were rich men and admirers of his work. In fact, Mill told Comte that these two individuals were so wealthy that he did not have to worry about ever reimbursing them.237 Very pleased, Comte gave their contribution added significance, calling it “the first collective manifestation of a real and decisive adhesion to the new general philosophy.”238 He intended to advertise their generosity so that other philosophers and their “oppressors” would learn that “useful and conscientious works” could count on being protected.239 Most of all, Comte was pleased to be able to show his enemies that they had not achieved their goal of destroying his “material existence,” which would have stopped his “mental action.”240 Indeed, because of his dismissal, he could fully devote himself to his second great work. He claimed to feel the usual signs of intellectual fermentation: insomnia and other physical troubles. But these problems were indications not so much of his mental activity but of his anxiety about his position – anxiety that he hated to admit. A few months later, in December 1844, he acknowledged that he had to exercise “constant discipline” over his “emotions” and “conduct” to maintain his mental health. He accused his enemies not only of attempting to destroy his material and intellectual life but also of trying to cause a “terrible and irreparable return to the fatal episode of 1826.” To prevent this occurrence, he decided to delay writing his new work because he knew if he experienced “a strong excitation . . . in the affective part and in the intellectual part of the brain” at the same time, the results could be “deadly.”241 He had to reserve his forces to deal with his increasingly untenable position at the Ecole Polytechnique. more trouble at the ecole polytechnique As mentioned above, Soult had chosen Duhamel as director of studies in March 1844; he was at the top of the lists presented by both the Council of Instruction and the Academy of Sciences,

237 238 239 240 241

George Grote: A Biography (London: University of London/Athlone Press, 1962), 55–7, 183. Comte did not find out about Raike Currie’s help until a little later. Comte to Raikes Currie, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:57. Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 1, 1844, CG, 2:284. Comte to Mill, June 27, 1845, CG, 3:50. Comte to Mill, August 28, 1844, CG, 2:280. Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, CG, 2:307.

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which preferred him to Liouville, Arago’s ally. The Council and the Academy then had to submit candidates for Duhamel’s former post of mathematics examiner for graduating seniors. But neither group was eager to do so because of their distaste for the new rules requiring them to come up with lists of three candidates. Finally, in July, the Council agreed to give the minister the required list, putting Lam´e on top. The Academy, which, according to Maurice Crosland, “favored the moderate left and the centre ground rather than the right wing of politics,” may have been eager to taunt Soult; it presented only one candidate, Lam´e.242 Soult did not consider him appropriate and chose Chasles, the second name on the Council’s list. But Chasles refused to accept, out of regard for Lam´e. Needing to make the appointment, the minister retaliated by following the usual procedure of temporarily giving the post to the official who had it before. Thus Duhamel became both director of studies and mathematics examiner for graduation.243 Even Comte admitted that the minister’s decision was imprudent. The students believed that their examiner could not be objective because his job as director of studies gave him so much information about them that he would have already ranked them in his mind. To show their displeasure, they revolted, refusing to let themselves be examined by him on August 16. They sent a delegation of students to Comte to seek his advice. Finding the students’ motives too “frivolous,” Comte advised them to cease complaining.244 Perhaps remembering what had happened in the spring regarding the Pritchard affair, he was sure they were being encouraged by outside agitators. Indeed, they sent a delegation to Arago, who gave them his support. Encouraging their resistance, he promised to explain their situation at the next meeting of the Academy, which ended up supporting the students. Comte’s recommendation was for naught. On the evening of August 16, the students began pouring out of the school to stage a protest. The next day the French cabinet, perhaps taking advantage of Soult’s absence from Paris, dismissed the entire school, for the fifth time since its establishment. A political scandal ensued. Without consulting Soult, the king then asked Admiral de Mackau, the man who had signed the ordinance condemning Admiral Dupetit-Thours, to become interim minister of war; he now countersigned the ordinance dismissing the students. Soult, 242 243

244

Crosland, Science under Control, 187. Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 96. The following year, in August 1845, Duhamel resigned from the post of examiner, which Lam´e finally procured. See Lam´e to Comte, August 20, 1845, MAC. Comte to Mill, August 23, 1844, CG, 2:277. Bonnin gave Comte a letter that the students sent to the government to express their complaints systematically. See Bonnin to Comte, November 24, 1844, MAC. See also Pinet, Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique, 233–4.

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who felt shoved aside, resigned in indignation.245 Arago was accused in some journals of having manipulated the students.246 Yet left-wing periodicals, such as La R´eforme, lashed out at the “arbitrary act” of the government in naming Duhamel against the rules of the school; it supported the “fraternal solidarity of the students,” who were right to demonstrate.247 Le National also condemned the government’s illegal measures, singling out Guizot as the mastermind behind the dismissal.248 Comte believed that the government had acted too severely, but he was happy that it had an excuse to reorganize the school. He hoped the government would deprive the Council of the right to present candidates, a move that would favor his “cause.”249 This series of events underscores Comte’s own transformation. His attitude reflects a lack of sympathy for the young people, whom he considered his most promising supporters. It also shows how conservative he had become, for in 1816 he had headed a similar rebellion at the Ecole Polytechnique, against an unfair r´ep´etiteur. Now he opportunistically supported a government he disliked to maintain his principle of respecting the political status quo and, more importantly, to help his career. The Ecole Polytechnique was reorganized by royal decree on October 30, 1844. The government wanted to regain the power over the school that it had lost when it was restructured by Arago in the early 1830s. Although Soult was persuaded by the king to delay his resignation as minister of war, the school reopened under a new head, the severe General Louis de Rostolan, who came from the infantry. Comte immediately won him over to his side. One change in the school’s structure, which Comte believed was stimulated by his own case, was that Soult decided to increase the power of the administrators of the school. To that end, he reduced the authority of the Council of Instruction and Academy of Sciences by taking away their right to nominate candidates. This right was henceforth to be exercised by the Council of Improvement, which would present a list of two names to the minister of war, who would decide on the final appointee.250 This Council was less vulnerable to the intrigues of “scientific coteries” because its members were divided more evenly between professors 245

246 247 248 249 250

Gotteri, Soult, 602; “Paris 18 aoˆut,” La R´eforme, August 19, 1844, page 1; “France: Paris, 18 aoˆut,” Le National, August 19, 1844, page 1. There were other reasons for the resignations, including Soult’s poor health and worries about the war in North Africa. Callot, Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique, 93n1; Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 96. “D´epart des e´ l`eves de l’Ecole Polytechnique,” La R´eforme, August 17, 1844, page 2. “France: Paris, 17 aoˆut,” Le National, August 18, 1844, page 2; “France: Paris 19 aoˆut,” Le National, August 20, 1844, page 1. Comte to Mill, August 23, 1844, CG, 2:278. Mercadier, “Histoire de l’enseignement,” 55; Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 49, 97. The text of the ordinance reorganizing the Ecole Polytechnique is republished in “Nouvelles diverses,” La R´eforme, November 4, 1844, pages 3–4.

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and administrators. The latter came from the Ecole Polytechnique and from the public services, the government sector where many graduates of the school worked.251 Arago, who did not agree with Soult’s measures, resigned from the Council of Improvement, where only three men could serve as representatives from the Academy.252 To Comte, this reorganization was a vindication of the criticisms of the scientific regime that he had made in the Cours. Indeed, an article in La R´eforme noted that the ordinance seemed motivated “uniquely by hatred of the Academy of Sciences.”253 Comte was optimistic that the new council would overturn the decision to fire him and reinstate him as admissions examiner. In recent months, he had even become something of a celebrity because Armand Marrast had published in late 1844 six articles on the Cours by Emile Littr´e, which were widely read. Keeping a careful list of who sat on the Council of Improvement, Comte figured that he could count on support from generals Rostolan and Vaillant, Colonel Lesbros (the new second-in-command), Duhamel, Lam´e, and Poinsot.254 But seven of the twenty-eight members who served that year had been his leading opponents on the Council of Instruction and were waging, according to one administrator, “a terrible war” against him.255 These included Sturm and Mathieu, who wished to punish him for 251 252

253 254

255

See the letter from Comte to General Rostolan, November 18, 1844, CG, 2:294–6. Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 52; Maurice Daumas, Arago, 1786–1853: La Jeunesse de la science, 2d ed. (Paris: Belin, 1987), 230. After Arago resigned, the Academy voted for Poinsot, Thenard, and Charles Dupin to serve on the Council of Improvement. See “L’Ecole Polytechnique,” La R´eforme, November 7, 1844, page 1. “R´eorganisation de l’Ecole Polytechnique,” La R´eforme, November 2 and 3, 1844, page 2. Comte, one-page sheet entitled “Conseil de Perfectionnement de l’Ecole Polytechnique,” August 14, 1845, MAC. For the list of supporters of Comte, see Duhamel to Comte, December 17, 1844, MAC. Comte had been rivals with Lam´e and Duhamel for a long time. According to Joseph Bertrand, Duhamel, Lam´e, and Comte were ranked second, third, and fourth respectively on the list of students admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique in 1814. Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques,” 529. Jonathan Beecher has recently discovered in Moscow two unpublished letters from Comte to Lam´e, written on October 6, 1818 and January 13, 1819. They pertain to various publishing and teaching opportunities that the two young men were trying to secure. In the first letter, Comte told Lam´e that he would not do the article that he, Lam´e, asked him to write and advises him on how to get his work advertised in a journal. In the second, Comte with great wit informs Lam´e that a wealthy man who Lam´e had hoped would be his student did not have time to take lessons. Beecher found a third unpublished letter from Comte written on August 4, 1837 to a mathematics teacher at the Coll`ege Charlemagne regarding a student who had recently passed his examination for the Ecole Polytechnique. Russian State Archives of Social-Political History, Fond 467, opis’ 1, delo 314. Lesbros to Comte, November 21, 1844, MAC. Baron Louis Thenard, who had taught Comte and had been insulted by him in the Cours, sat on the Council. See Pickering, Comte, 1:499. According to Bertrand, Paul Dubois, who taught French literature, and Mr. Hase, who taught German, were also tired of being insulted by him. Bertrand, review of Comte, by Gruber, 690. Neither of them was on the Council of Improvement.

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his insults.256 Yet Comte hoped to receive support from the administrators of the public services, the majority of whom were military men supportive of the minister. However, when the meeting was called to order on December 16, 1844, nine administrators were absent. Their other responsibilities made their attendance erratic. To make matters worse, Comte’s name was only fourth on a list of candidates recommended by a special committee.257 After discussing Comte’s qualifications, the members of the Council voted, ten to nine, not to include him on the short list of final candidates that they were forwarding to the minister.258 Wantzel was the first candidate and eventually became admissions examiner. Considering the closeness of the vote, it is no wonder that Comte was shocked and rued the absence of the administrators, who might have changed the outcome. He was sure that “almost” all of them were on his side.259 To him, the pedantocracy had merely reestablished itself. He was particularly worried that the new council’s judgment seemed to confirm his enemies’ insinuations that he was mentally ill and consequently unfit to be examiner. Three days after his defeat, Comte wrote another letter to Soult, begging him to demand an inquiry into the entire affair and a new list of candidates. After all, the Council of Improvement had expressly rejected Soult’s July recommendation that Comte be appointed. The “spirit of disorder” was everywhere. 260 Comte urged Soult to reassert his authority. The government should guarantee his job by making it either permanent or dependent only on the minister. On December 20, 1844, Comte met privately with Soult, whose lassitude surprised him. The effort to reorganize the Ecole Polytechnique had clearly exhausted the aging minister, who by this time was seventy-five. Soult complained bitterly that problems at the school had taken up more time than all his other responsibilities combined. 256 257

258

259 260

Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques,” 543. The four names were Delaunay, Wantzel, Urbain Le Verrier (who would discover Neptune in 1846), and Comte. Wantzel and Delaunay were ultimately recommended for the post. Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil de Perfectionnement, volume 6, page 180, EP. In the end, Sturm may have acted on some level in favor of Comte. In her letters, Massin commended Sturm’s conduct with regard to Comte, which surprised her, because he was not at all a friend of her husband’s. She wrote to Comte, “People asked Mr. Sturm to provoke the revocation of your position as tutor [r´ep´etiteur] of his course; he refused to do so.” Massin to Comte, one letter dated simply 1845 and another dated December 20, 1844, MAC. See also her letter to Comte of December 23, 1842 (MAC), in which she pointed out that Sturm attended Comte’s trial against Bachelier. Laffitte also suggested that Sturm “refused to hurt Auguste Comte.” Laffitte, “Carri`ere polytechnique d’Auguste Comte,” 323. Comte may have also received support from Baron Charles Dupin, who had recommended him for a job in 1828. See Pickering, Comte, 1:413. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 421. Comte to the Mar´echal Duc de Dalmatie, Minister of War, December 19, 1844, CG, 2:298.

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Discouraged by the paltry results of his endeavors, he told Comte that he sympathized with him but could do nothing more for him. He would not intervene in the affairs of the new Council.261 On December 30, 1844, he wrote to the new head of the school, General Rostolan, to tell him that he had named Wantzel examiner of admissions for 1845.262 Feeling abandoned, Comte condemned Soult’s “weakness.”263 General Tholos´e sorrowfully explained to Comte that certain “hatreds . . . are implacable” and that the school had caused the minister so much trouble that it was “rather natural” that he was “not disposed to challenge everything again.”264 Although Comte kept applying for other posts, such as that of director of studies in August 1845, he was never successful.265 On Christmas Day, Comte wrote Mill a sad, reflective letter, which showed his theatrical flair and Manichean bent. For the past two years, he felt that he had been the protagonist in a “great personal drama.” He represented the good philosophical spirit, while Arago symbolized the bad scientific one. Their conflict was inevitable. The preface to the sixth volume of the Cours had been the first act of the drama, the trial the second, his triumphant reelection in 1843 the third, and his loss of position in 1844 the fourth. The “somber” fifth and “final” act, that is, the denouement, occurred in January 1845, when Soult officially named Wantzel examiner and thus closed “this strange affair.”266 In Comte’s eyes, the clear moral of his story was that he was not an advocate of the scientific regime as his detractors claimed. Ever since Benjamin Constant had accused him of trying to set up a scientific theocracy, Comte had tried to dispel this suspicion, which he realized alienated the left from positivism. To appeal to the revolutionary school, which he considered his best source of support, he had tried to eliminate its fears that he was setting up a despotic system that gave 261 262

263 264 265

266

Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, CG, 2:306. Letter from Soult, minister of war, to General Rostolan, December 30, 1844, Minutes of the meeting of January 4, 1845, Registre: Proc`es-Verbal du Conseil d’Instruction, vol. 8, EP. Comte to Barbot de Chement, January 5, 1845, CG, 2:315. General Tholos´e to Comte, December 31, 1844, MAC. See Comte to Lam´e, August 16, 1845, CG, 3:93; Comte to General de Rostolan, August 18, 1845, CG, 3:94. Responding to his alleged abuses, the Ecole Polytechnique eventually laid down a rule that no examiner could publish works on material contained in the exam. Bruno Belhoste, “L’Elitisme polytechnicien: Excellence scolaire et distinction sociale,” in La France des X: Deux si`ecles d’histoire, ed. Bruno Belhoste, Amy Dahan Dalmedico, Dominque Pestre, and Antoine Picon (Paris: Economica, 1995), 26–7. Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, CG, 2:305, 308. Later, on April 18, 1845, the Council of Improvement ordered a committee composed of Duhamel, Mathieu, and Lam´e to present Wantzel as the Council’s choice of “examiner in active service.” See meeting of April 18, 1845, R´egistre du Conseil de Perfectionnement, volume six, EP. See also Comte to Mill, January 10, 1845, CG, 2:318.

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scientists the power priests used to have. Thus beginning in the sixth volume of the Cours, he began to direct his energies more explicitly against the scientific class. In the Discours sur l’esprit positif, he said that “a philosophy derived directly from the sciences will probably find its most dangerous enemies among those who cultivate them today.”267 His battle against these enemies led to the sacrifice of his livelihood. But he hoped that he had at least satisfactorily laid to rest the left’s fears.268 What the left would undoubtedly remember, however, was Comte’s appeal to the reactionary government to protect him. Comte gradually realized how much he had estranged part of the left. By the summer of 1845, he contemplated seeking asylum in England if the government were taken over by the radical revolutionaries because he feared they would send him to the guillotine or gallows.269 267 268 269

Trait´e philosophique d’astronomie populaire, 84. Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, CG, 2:308–9. Comte to Mill, June 27, 1845, CG, 3:47.

Chapter 2

Tensions in Comte’s Relationships, 1842–1846

One can, to an almost laughable degree, infer what a man’s wife is like, from his opinions about women in general. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

diff icultie s in comte’s frie ndship with mill Comte and John Stuart Mill had been corresponding since November 1841, when Mill sent Comte a letter expressing admiration for his work. Mill’s interest in Comte, however, dated back to 1828. At that time, Comte’s friend Gustave d’Eichthal had given Mill a copy of the fundamental opuscule, the Plan des travaux scientifiques n´ecessaires pour r´eorganiser la soci´et´e. (This essay, published in 1824, was one of Comte’s most important works.) For years, Comte had played a crucial role in Mill’s intellectual development. His influence peaked with the publication of volume six of the Cours, which caused Mill to revise his own System of Logic (1843). Impressed with Mill’s adherence to his doctrine, Comte told his friend Valat that Mill was “with me, the only thinker who can be seriously called a completely positive philosopher.”1 His correspondence with Mill became “a real need,” one that was not only intellectual but emotional.2 Yet their game of mutual admiration became increasingly problematic beginning in late 1842. Mill questioned Comte’s insistence on giving heads of industry the responsibility for maintaining temporal order. How was Comte going to ensure that an individual became an industrial leader because he had true talent rather than simply wealthy parents or some other fortuitous advantage? Moreover, what political role would the workers play in the positive era? Would there be representative institutions to help them voice their opposition to the industrialists? Comte was not interested in answering Mill’s astute questions. To him, these concerns about the temporal order were premature and insignificant.3 All that mattered was the regeneration of the spiritual order. But to Mill, who was far more inspired by 1 2 3

Comte to Valat, July 17, 1843, CG, 2:184. Comte to Mill, August 23, 1843, CG, 2:191. Mill to Comte, October 23, 1842, CG, 2:371; Comte to Mill, November 5, 1842, CG, 2:107.

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democracy and would later lean toward socialism, these questions were of crucial importance. Another source of tension was the religious issue. Mill believed that positivism could fill the role once played by religion.4 Yet he was appalled that Comte flaunted his anti-theological stance. He did not dare to go as far as Comte without risking the loss of all his readers, for in England people deeply feared atheism. Mill suggested that positivism would gain more adherents if it avoided bringing up sensitive issues such as religion.5 But Comte boasted that the French were more advanced than the English in this respect. In fact, Comte seemed to redouble his attacks on established religions in the Discours to prove his audacity and the tolerance of the French. At one point, he suggested to Grote that Mill’s reserve on this issue was an excuse, covering motives of self-interest.6 But others, like Mill’s friend John Austin, also rejected Comte’s “cool contempt” toward religion. Austin believed that “even in impious France,” his attitude hurt “his worldly condition.” Comte’s “peremptory rejection” of religion and “all philosophy concerned with the insoluble and transcendent” raised “a presumption against his scientific capacities in many of the best minds not acquainted with his book.”7 Other British thinkers who found Comte irreligious were Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley, who helped found Christian socialism, and William George Ward, a mathematics tutor at Balliol College and devotee of John Henry Newman, who headed the Oxford Movement.8 Comte’s egoism and arrogance in other matters began to grate on Mill. When he finished the Cours, Comte told him that he would make an exception to his regime of cerebral hygiene and would include Mill’s System of Logic (1843) among the “privileged” works he would read.9 In 1838, Comte had adopted a regime of cerebral hygiene, whereby he ceased reading contemporary books, poetry, journals, and newspapers. (Exempted from this rule were scientific reviews and bulletins.) Yet after having looked at Mill’s book, Comte 4 5 6 7 8

9

Mill to Comte, December 15, 1842, CG, 2:374. Mill to Comte, January 28, 1843, CG, 2:378. Comte to G. Grote, February 27, 1845, CG, 2:329. John Austin to John Stuart Mill, n.d., excerpt in Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 654n6. Ward, who became a Roman Catholic theologian, otherwise spoke well of Comte in The Ideal of a Christian Church (1844) and indeed found him more profound than Joseph de Maistre, the conservative Catholic thinker. Mill maintained that Ward had grasped Comte’s deep appreciation of Catholicism. Ward’s compliments, relayed by Mill, encouraged Comte to seek later an alliance between positivism and Catholicism. See Mill to Comte, April 26, 1845, CG 3:37–88; Comte to Mill, May 15, 1845, CG, 3:10; Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill. A Criticism with Personal Recollections (London: Longmans, Green, 1882), 80; Charles D. Cashdollar, The Transformation of Theology, 1830–1890: Positivism and Protestant Thought in Britain and America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 47. Comte to Mill, August 24, 1842, CG, 2:73.

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made few comments about its intellectual content. He approached it in terms of how it would help the positivist cause. Most of all, he was interested in Mill’s appreciation of his own work. Comte told one friend that he wanted to make sure the System of Logic was widely read “because of the brilliant and precious admiration” that Mill showed for the Cours.10 For weeks, Comte even prodded Mill to translate it into French. Comte feared that if someone else translated it, that person might be pressured by some metaphysical group to alter or omit the frequent references to the Cours as well as Mill’s proclamation that he (Comte) was the “general head of the new philosophy.”11 Comte knew very well that Mill was giving him the respectability he needed and making him famous. He intended to take full advantage of his good fortune. a major problem looms: the woman que stion In June 1843, Mill complained to Comte that he had been suffering for two months from “a sort of intellectual languor” and a “nervous weakness.”12 From his own experience, Comte immediately understood the signs of “oppressive melancholy.”13 What he did not know was that Mill was experiencing financial troubles because he had lost a thousand pounds of his own money and several thousand pounds of his family’s trust money in 1842, when some American states repudiated the public debt and would not honor their bonds.14 The shock of this blow made Mill physically ill. He also yearned to be closer to Harriet Taylor, the married woman whom he loved. She was having her own family and health problems.15 Mill never mentioned these concerns to Comte. Mill’s general feeling of malaise was aggravated by an intellectual quandary. After having published A System of Logic and heard Comte’s possessive reaction to it, he wished to clarify his own relationship to positive philosophy. He realized the time had come to 10 11

12 13 14 15

Comte to Pouzin, July 15, 1843, CG, 2:175. Comte to Valat, July 17, 1843, CG, 2:184. Uninterested in translating the work, Mill asked for a recommendation from Armand Marrast, who did not bother to consult Comte. Comte was miffed, for he wanted his young friend Thal`es Bernard to have the job. Mallet, a philosophy teacher and friend of Marrast, was finally hired. Comte was displeased, as he had never heard of Mallet and thus did not know “to which of our metaphysical coteries or schools he really belongs.” Comte to Mill, December 23, 1843, CG, 2:224. See also Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:178. Mill to Comte, June 15, 1843, CG, 2:387. Comte to Mill, June 29, 1843, CG, 2:169. Nicholas Capaldi, John Stuart Mill: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 191; see Mineka, ed. The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, 486n2. Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (London: Secker and Warburg, 1954), 288–9.

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make Comte realize that his adherence to positivism was not complete. Like their common friend Gustave d’Eichthal, Mill felt overwhelmed by Comte’s domineering personality and needed to take his distance. But standing up to Comte made him uneasy. In June 1843, Mill told Comte that although he agreed in general with his ideas of social dynamics, including his theories of history and the separation of temporal and spiritual powers, he could not condone his doctrine of social statics. This doctrine, unlike social dynamics, did not seem to have been invented by Comte. Instead, it derived from old social theories. Moreover, it was not yet sufficiently positive, that is, scientific. Contrary to Comte, Mill insisted that property and marriage, which were treated by social statics, should be modified, although he did not know precisely in what sense. But he felt, for example, that divorce should at least be examined as an option. Yet Comte, reflecting his Catholic upbringing, dismissed divorce as a Protestant concoction that dissolved social ties.16 Mill also brought up the fact that he did not believe in the “necessary subordination of one sex to another.” He recognized early on that this position would represent to Comte “the most fundamental heresy.”17 Convinced that their agreement on issues of methodology and historical development would extend to doctrines relating to social structure, Comte treated Mill’s dissidence very lightly and even encouraged him to continue his “naive heretical confession.”18 Mill was merely going through a phase experienced by all “emancipated minds”; they were inevitably affected at some point by the metaphysical “aberrations of our epoch” which led them to put too much faith in political solutions to current social problems.19 Remembering his liberal past, Comte admitted that even he had gone through this phase, but he felt he had been saved by his studies of biology. Mill would likewise emerge unscathed by his experience. Comte’s attitude annoyed Mill, who denied being naively devoted to political reforms. Mill attributed their disagreement not to a passing revolutionary phase or to his ignorance of biology but to their different views of morality. Thus, to Mill, their dispute was very grave. If he and Comte could not agree on moral issues, they would also be at odds on institutional questions. One of the most important moral issues was men’s treatment of women, which was much debated in the 1830s and 1840s as feminism reemerged, especially in France, where its proponents had been 16 17 18 19

Mill to Comte, September 10, 1842, CG, 2:367; Comte to Mill, September 30, 1842, CG, 2:93. Mill to Comte, June 15, 1843, CG, 2:388. Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:179. Comte to Mill, June 29, 1843, CG, 2:172–3.

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repressed during the French Revolution.20 Throughout the Cours, Comte had made derogatory comments about feminist reformers, such as the Saint-Simonians and Fourierists. He had argued that domestic life was founded on sexual and generational inequalities. In fact, all of society was one vast hierarchy, for he preferred the term “fraternity” to “equality” to describe human relations.21 Having been influenced in his youth by the Saint-Simonians, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen, Mill strongly believed that women were equal to men and deliberately chose to confront Comte on this sensitive matter.22 As one of Mill’s biographers, remarked, “Throughout his life, that question [the woman question] was so much a passion with him that he often made it the final issue, the test on which depended his acceptance or rejection of a philosophic system.”23 For the next six months, the two thinkers covered “the woman question” from a myriad of perspectives: moral, biological, sociological, historical, and educational. Working out their specific positions, they knew at the time that their debate was significant. It changed their personal relationship forever and had a profound impact on their respective intellectual development.24 Objecting to Comte’s view of the family as a social unit based on sexual subordination, Mill began gingerly by arguing that “there was room . . . for equality in human affections.” He explained, “I find that the affection that a person of a slightly elevated nature feels for a being truly subordinated to his authority has something imperfect about it.”25 Moreover, the ideas and experiences of the superior individual overshadowed those of the inferior one. As a result, the two people could never enjoy feelings of sympathy for one another. Comte agreed with Mill that a complete feeling of sympathy could exist only in a relationship of equality. But reiterating what he once said to Valat, he insisted that such a relationship could occur only between “two eminent men, whose morality is strong enough to contain every serious impulse of rivalry.”26 Because a woman was morally weak and could not contain her competitive nature, she 20 21 22

23

24 25 26

Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 41. Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:180. John Stuart Mill, Autobiography, in Autobiography and Literary Essays, by John Stuart Mill, edited by John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger, vol. 1 of The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John Robson, 33 vols. (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1963–91), 62, 173–4. Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill, 90. According to Packe, Mill had been disturbed in 1829 by an article written by Thomas Macaulay, who criticized his father, James Mill, for wanting to restrict the right to vote to men. See Comte to Mill, December 21, 1843, CG, 2:221–2; Mill to Comte, January 17, 1844, 411. Mill to Comte, July 13, 1843, CG, 2:391. Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:180.

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would necessarily be in a position of rivalry with a man, who would invariably prevail. Comte looked to science to support his conviction that there could be no relationship of equality between a man and a woman. He insisted that biology, which he felt Mill knew poorly, showed that the female in all species, and even more so in the human species, was physiologically and anatomically in a “state of extreme infancy which renders her essentially inferior to the corresponding organic type.”27 Her anatomical differences in particular made her far from “the grand human type,” the male, who was, in Comte’s eyes, the standard.28 Thus Comte believed that gender differences were biologically determined. He stood on the “nature” side of the nature versus nurture debate. Reflecting his skeptical attitude toward biology as well as his own Benthamite upbringing, Mill leaned toward the “nurture” side of the debate. He argued that even if women were closer to children by their cerebral structure and nervous, muscular, and cellular systems, this finding would not be decisive. After all, children’s inferiority to men rested more on lack of exercise than on the size of their brains. Education helped develop their functions and made them adults. By implication, a better education could help women too. Mill believed that Comte exaggerated the importance of phrenology in ascertaining the functions of the brain. When Comte had had him read Franz Gall’s work in phrenology in early 1842, Mill had raised many objections, but both he and Comte were so enthusiastic about engaging in a joint mission, that they had glossed over their differences. Now in 1843, Mill repeated his disapproval of Gall’s theory that the anatomy of the brain corresponded to certain animal and mental instincts. This doctrine struck him as too vague, uncertain, and deterministic. Did not the environment play a part in the formation of character? Comte’s emphasis on general instinctual faculties did not leave room for individual differences.29 Moreover, he asserted that there were some physiologists who believed that despite the fact that women’s brains were smaller and thus weaker than men’s, they were, nevertheless, more active. Consequently, women were better able than men to accomplish more in a small period of time and to do things that required quickness. They should excel particularly in poetry and practical life. But they would be inferior to men in prolonged intellectual work, such as that required by science and philosophy. Mill felt that this biological theory was borne out in what he observed in life around him, but even this schema was still too 27 29

Ibid., 179. 28 Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:199. Mill to Comte, October 30, 1843, CG, 2:401. See also Rick Rylance, Victorian Psychology and British Culture 1850–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 100.

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tentative. He did not believe, for example, that women were innately incapable of doing science. The basic problem was that women were not given the opportunity to develop their capacity for intellectual work because they had no education and passed their time doing mundane domestic chores. Men who did not study as boys or work as adults had no intellectual capacity either. Mill went so far as to say that in the regular activities of life that engaged women as much as men, mediocre women showed “ordinarily more capacity than mediocre men.”30 Again, he insisted that most gender differences could be eliminated or minimized if women had a better education and social position. Rejecting phrenology, Mill recommended a new science, which he called ethology. It would determine the influence of outside circumstances on the development of the emotional and intellectual character of the individual. This science of the formation of human nature or character, which would take up the work of Helv´etius, was necessary for a sound educational system. Without such a science, it would remain impossible to know which gender differences were innate. In opposition to Comte, Mill believed that the nineteenth century’s reaction against the Enlightenment had gone too far; the result was that too much importance was being given to socalled inborn dispositions. There had to be more space for individual liberty.31 Comte believed that the study of human nature should remain a part of biology and that one could not explain humanity simply by extrapolating from studies of man as an individual.32 Moreover, although Comte agreed that Gall had completely overlooked the importance of education, he believed that Mill exaggerated its impact. Because woman’s physical constitution, especially her “cerebral apparatus,” was substandard, no amount of exercise and education could change this basic condition.33 She would never arrive at the adult stage. Disappointed that Mill gave so little credence to biological theories, Comte recommended that Mill read the works of Gall’s disciple, Johann Spurzheim, to acquire a better understanding of the biological grounds of “the domestic hierarchy.”34 He also urged him to peruse Pierre Roussel’s Syst`eme physique et moral de la femme (1775), which stressed women’s physical, intellectual, and moral differences. Yet Mill believed that in many respects his own knowledge of biology 30 31 32 33 34

Mill to Comte, August 30, 1843, CG, 2:397. Mill to Comte, October 30, 1843, CG, 2:401. Chapter five of the System of Logic covered this new science. L. L´evy-Bruhl, ed., introduction to Lettres in´edites de John Stuart Mill a` Auguste Comte (Paris: F´elix Alcan, 1899), xxxv. Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:199. Comte to Mill, November 14, 1843, CG, 2:209.

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was more extensive than Comte’s because he had studied more theories of intellectual and moral phenomena, which Comte disdained as part of psychology.35 Comte’s opposition to psychology owed much to his hatred of Victor Cousin’s philosophy of the unified self (le moi), which seemed too metaphysical, if not mystical; his distaste for Condillac’s sensationalism; his dislike of Helv´etius’s depiction of humans as essentially egoists; his unease with the Id´eologues’ excessive empiricism and portrayal of man as essentially rational; and the impact of counter-revolutionaries, such as Lamennais and Bonald, who took interior observation to be similar to Cartesian self-examination and thus too supportive of individualism. Although he himself frequently practiced introspection, Comte believed that one could best learn about human nature, and especially about the mind, by investigating the actual organs of the brain (phrenology) and people’s lives in society, which were covered by biology and sociology respectively.36 As Laurent Clauzade has pointed out, the “true human point of view” was sociological. The collectivity should take precedence especially in studies of the mind because the mind was, as Clauzade wrote, “a collective and historic reality.”37 In addition, Comte affirmed that gender differences could be confirmed not only by biology but by his new science of sociology. Cleverly using arguments from social dynamics, the part of sociology Mill claimed to favor, Comte stated, in a rather circular fashion, that women must be naturally inferior, for how else could their “constant social subordination” be explained. Slaves and serfs had been in a far worse social situation but had managed to free themselves, mainly because they were not organically different from their masters. But according to Comte, women had become increasingly subordinate to men throughout history and their “social subjection” would be “necessarily indefinite.”38 He believed that “modern life, characterized by industrial activity and the positive spirit,” would develop the differences between men and women at least as much as theological and military life had done.39 35 36 37

38 39

See Comte’s derogatory remarks on psychologists in Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 266. See Rylance, Victorian Psychology, 99. Laurent Clauzade, “Auguste Comte et Stuart Mill: Les Enjeux de la psychologie,” Revue d’Histoire des sciences humaines 8 (2003), 45–7, 51–3. On Cousin and the Id´eologues, see Pickering, Comte, 1:409–10, 597–8. On Comte’s own introspective tendencies and his opinions of Condillac and Helv´etius, see Petit, “Conflits et renouveau,” 89. One example of Comte’s introspective proclivities was his claim to find evidence for the law of three stages while examining his own journey from theology to metaphysics to positivism. Cours, 1:22. Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:201. Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:179.

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Comte and Mill discussed these gender differences at great length, using their own observations for support. Mill argued that he knew women better than Comte did because in England they had a more normal relationship with men. French women were educated from childhood to act solely as sexual creatures in order to have a certain effect on men. English women, on the other hand, did not play this part all the time. They could better cultivate their faculties and could grow closer to men. Annoyed at Mill’s nationalism and boasting, Comte claimed, on the contrary, that women developed more fully in France because they lived “in more complete company with men.”40 Nevertheless, referring to the small size of women’s brains and his knowledge of women, he insisted that women could not think abstractly, generalize, or argue well, especially because they were dominated by their emotions. They could not even excel in the arts, which would seem to favor their qualities. Passive creatures, women should have no directing or governing role in any realm, including science, philosophy, aesthetics, or practical life (industrial and military life). They should not be allowed to govern even their own families. In short, women were “reserved for consultation and modification.”41 Like many other thinkers of his day who supported the ideology of the separation of spheres, Comte viewed women as primarily sympathetic, generous creatures. Their purity in the domestic realm was an important counterpart to the crass materialism of the public realm. In fact, he worried that the disorder of the present, transitional period might distance women from their homes. He did not, for example, approve of their holding jobs. They need not worry, for men would support and protect them. Forbidding women to have any pursuit incompatible with their “domestic destination,” Comte wanted to relegate them increasingly to the private sphere, deprive them of any outside responsibilities, and thus make sure they did not become men’s rivals.42 This strict separation of spheres was the proper way to ensure social harmony and women’s happiness. Unlike most advocates of the cult of domesticity, Comte was not primarily interested in women’s maternal function. He presented women as the “domestic auxiliaries” of the spiritual power, that is, the positive philosophers. In the new positivist state, they would fortify with their feelings “the practical influence of the intelligence to modify morally the natural reign of material force.” They would be an effective moral force because their interests naturally linked them “to the triumph of universal morality” and they were untainted by specialization and the “disastrous” educational system.43 Their 40 41

Comte to Mill, November 14, 1843, CG, 2:209. Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:199. 42 Ibid., 201.

43

Ibid., 200.

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ignorance guaranteed their virtue and their subordination to positive philosophers. Mill admitted that he was unsure of the “natural divergences” between the sexes. But he, too, had an idealized, sentimental vision of women. They struck him as intelligent in a wider range of areas and less egotistical than men. Superior in sympathy to men, they always kept in mind the happiness and sufferings of their fellow human beings, who were very real to them. They might have more problems looking beyond their immediate, individual interests, but they were at least superior in this regard to philosophers, who often neglected to consider their own interests or those of anyone else. Since women were always forced to deal with practical issues, they rarely became “speculative dreamers.”44 In praising women in this way, Mill seemed to be criticizing Comte for not paying sufficient attention to his job and for losing his grip on day-to-day reality. Mill argued point by point against Comte’s portrayal of women. Contrary to Comte, he believed society would be better off if women had a governing role. After all, they did a good job managing households and modest industrial establishments, the only ones so far entrusted to them. Arguing against Comte, who found the idea of a queen “ridiculous,”45 Mill declared that women filled this governmental post admirably. Moreover, unlike Comte, Mill believed women had as much perseverance and patience as men. If they were capricious, it was only to get what they wanted from men, who treated them like “charming toys.”46 Whereas Comte found women to be driven by their desires, Mill found them to be far more selfsacrificing than men. Moreover, both men and women, according to Mill, had difficulty giving priority to reason instead of the emotions because doing so depended on excellent self-knowledge and selfcontrol, both of which were very rare. Nevertheless, many Englishmen would argue that women had more self-discipline and a stronger conscience, which would suggest that they subjected their passions to reason more ably than men. As for Comte’s historical arguments, Mill rejected his implication that women were naturally subordinate because other lower classes had achieved freedom from slavery, serfdom, and other inferior positions. Mill pointed out that domestic slaves, unlike other slaves, had never been able to liberate themselves but relied on others (i.e., other slaves and the Church) to emancipate them. The reason was that the dependence involved in domestic servitude was debilitating. Women’s dependence was worse than that of many other groups; their servitude 44 45 46

Mill to Comte, August 30, 1843, CG, 2:396–7. Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:179. Mill to Comte, October 30, 1843, CG, 2:403.

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was all-encompassing. The very gentleness of their servitude worked against women, who were less likely to strike out against a system that took care of them and encouraged human laziness and weakness. No other slaves had ever been so thoroughly socialized to believe that they would be always subjected to other humans. No other slaves were forced to be on such intimate terms with their masters. The system took advantage of women’s sympathetic nature to make them believe that they could find happiness only in male affection, which demanded their complete dependence. In addition, the man’s greater physical force compelled the woman to respect him. All of these factors delayed women’s “social emancipation.”47 Yet Mill believed that women had made progress in liberating themselves, especially in the realm of literature. Instead of imitating men, women now were beginning to write like women, that is, with “feminine feelings and experience.”48 Comte rejected Mill’s idea that there had been progress in female emancipation in the past hundred years. He argued that nineteenth-century female writers were not superior to such seventeenth-century figures as Madame de S´evign´e, Madame de Lafayette, and Madame de Motteville. He was particularly harsh with regard to George Sand, whom he considered inferior to these seventeenth-century women. He deplored the celebrity she attained and her assumption of a man’s name. Comte strongly condemned the women’s movement in general. Although in 1819, he had criticized men for using the “horrible law of the strongest” to dominate women, now he claimed that women’s attacks on men for abuse of power were groundless and “theatrical.”49 Women should be subordinate. He maintained that the women’s movement arose in part because the critical tendencies of his times had discredited the theological basis of the “domestic hierarchy” – the “weak” and “stupid” idea of Adam’s rib. This theological idea needed to be replaced by a more scientific principle. In the meantime, women’s rebellion reflected the anarchical, utopian atmosphere of the times. It was really an excuse for more licentiousness [“d´evergondage”] and would have appalling private and public consequences. Sexual equality, if ever instituted, would trouble women’s conditions of existence because they would never be able to compete with men. Moreover, it would “destroy the principal charm which today leads us toward women and which . . . assumes women [are] in an essentially passive and reliant situation.” Ultimately, the women’s movement would threaten men to such an extent that it would put an end to sexual relations and thus the reproduction of the species. 47 49

Mill to Comte, October 30, 1843, CG, 2:405. 48 Ibid., 405. Comte to Valat, September 24, 1819, CG, 1:56; Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:201.

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Comte could not have more clearly shown that he wanted women to remain men’s submissive, “sweet companions,” devoted to their happiness.50 Given the heated nature of the debate, it is clear that Comte and Mill’s disagreement was more than political or moral; it was personal. Their differences could be attributed in part to their personalities. When Mill argued that human sympathies could be based on equality, he admitted the possibility that his judgment of human nature was perhaps based too much on his own which was “perhaps exceptional.”51 He taunted Comte in saying that those who insisted on relations of dependence in the interest of harmony were egotistical. Comte could in fact brook no relationship of equality. Also, both Comte and Mill suggested that they based their opinions on their own observations, which, of course, had to relate to the women closest to them. The debate thus reflected the relationship between Mill and Harriet Taylor on the one hand and that of Comte and Caroline Massin on the other. It became so acrimonious because it involved the two men’s deepest feelings about the most important women in their lives.52 Almost from the beginning of his marriage in 1825, Comte had had serious difficulties with his wife, who he complained was too domineering and rebellious. Although in his youth, he had been influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft and espoused women’s rights, he soon dropped his support for liberal feminism.53 Since the mid-1820s, he had dreamt about the ideal woman, one who would submit to his every wish and thus create domestic harmony. In the Cours, he had asserted that marriage rested on the “inevitable natural subordination of woman toward man.”54 To some extent, Comte’s vision of a hierarchy where man controlled the inferior woman was the result of his own disillusionment with married life. His comments to Mill showed that he feared rivalry in a male–female relationship; he disliked feeling challenged by Massin, who was a strong, opinionated, intelligent woman with an “impressive culture,” as Bruno Gentil recently remarked.55 Comte also acknowledged that he based his view of the predominantly passionate nature of woman partly on her example. 50 51 52

53 55

Comte to Mill, November 14, 1843, CG, 2:210–11. Mill to Comte, July 13, 1843, CG, 2:391. In The Subjection of Women, Mill begins by explaining how arguments about the equality of the sexes become intense because opinions are so “strongly rooted in feelings.” John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, in Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, ed. John M. Robson, vol. 21 of The Collected Works, 261. Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:198. 54 Cours, 2:185. Bruno Gentil, “Notes,” in Auguste Comte/Caroline Massin Correspondance in´edite (1831– 1851), ed. Pascaline Gentil (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006), 294. Gentil bases his remark on Massin’s frequent references to such obscure literary figures as Oliver Goldsmith and Adam Billault (Maˆıtre Adam). The latter was a seventeenth-century worker poet and singer.

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To accept Mill’s point of view, he would have had to admit that it was because of his character that his marriage had failed. He preferred to blame his wife, whose conduct reflected in his eyes the aberrant notions of sexual equality, encouraged by the metaphysical trends of the times. Comte not surprisingly agreed that Mill’s divergence on this sensitive issue of woman’s nature was his “principal heresy.”56 Using a biological analogy to make his point, Comte declared that this heresy was “incurable” only if Mill’s “intellectual deviations” were supported by his heart.57 Comte did not know that Mill’s heart and mind were in fact unified on this issue. Mill, however, recognized it, for at this time he was profoundly in love with Harriet Taylor, a married woman. Yet he had discretely never mentioned her to Comte. Mill considered her a “feminine genius,” a “woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature.” If all careers had been open to women, she would have been “eminent among the rulers of mankind.” She could have also been a “consummate artist.”58 Considering Mill’s opinion of Taylor, who eventually became his wife, it is not surprising that he believed in women’s intellectual and artistic abilities and in the possibility of their having a governing role. Perhaps it was partly because of her that Mill’s discussion with Comte became increasingly bitter. Holding feminist views, Harriet Taylor accused Mill of being spineless with Comte. Mill did seem in fact often intimidated; he tried at times to appear less resolute or to attribute his opinions to others in order not to antagonize Comte.59 In commenting on Mill’s retort to Comte concerning the condition of women, Taylor said she was “disappointed” by Mill’s tone, which was “more than half-apologetic.” She told him: “Do not think I wish you had said more on the subject, I only wish that what was said was in the tone of conviction, not of suggestion. This dry root of a man is not a worthy coadjutor, & scarcely a worthy opponent.”60 Referring perhaps to Comte’s standpoint, she later wrote 56 57 59

60

Mill to Comte, July 13, 1843, CG, 2:390. Comte to Mill, June 29, 1843, CG, 2:172–3. 58 Mill, Autobiography, 193, 195. For example, in countering Comte’s argument that women were like children, Mill suggested that women suffered from excessive “nervous excitability” and resembled young men more than old men. Mill to Comte, August 30, 1843, CG, 2:397. See also the way Mill backed off from his arguments in his letter to Comte of October 30, 1843, CG, 2:403. Harriet Taylor, Note to John Stuart Mill, n.d., Mill–Taylor, GB 0097, vol. 2, item 327, folio 723, 723v., 724, 724v, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics. This note is reprinted in Harriet Taylor to John Stuart Mill, about 1844, in F. A. Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Correspondence and Subsequent Marriage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), 114–15.

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in a celebrated essay, “What is wanted for women is equal rights, equal admission to all social privileges; not a position apart, a sort of sentimental priesthood.”61 She also convinced Mill that Comte’s biological determinism was equally dangerous for men. Reminding Mill that the differences between men and women derive from their different occupations, she added, “Neither you nor Comte seem to settle the other analogous question, whether original differences of character and capacities in men are to determine to which class of workers they are to belong.”62 If their characters were determined at birth, men would be deterred from trying to improve themselves. If one accepted determinism and the notion that nature was more crucial than nurture, the minds of not only women but workers would be permanently stunted, and neither group would ever be able to challenge their oppressors. Ultimately social science would regulate everything.63 Later, perhaps, Mill was referring to his interest in positivism when he claimed in his Autobiography (1873) that Taylor had cured him of his “tendency towards over-government, both social and political.”64 In short, Taylor appears to have checked Mill’s general enthusiasm for Comte and made him feel ashamed. He even admitted to his young friend Alexander Bain that he was upset that he had made so many concessions to the authoritarian Comte.65 Both his own individuality and his faith in individualism were in danger. Because this debate was not only doctrinal but personal, it had far more profound consequences than their discussion of psychology in 61

62

63 64 65

Harriet Taylor Mill, Enfranchisement of Women (1851), in Harriet Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill, Essays on Sexual Equality, ed. Alice S. Rossi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 120. Harriet Taylor, Note, n.d., Mill–Taylor, GB 0097, Box III, Item 103, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics. Hayek appended this note to the previously mentioned note found in another part of the archives. See Hayek, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, 115. Capaldi, Mill, 172; Jo Ellen Jacobs, The Voice of Harriet Taylor Mill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 110. Mill, Autobiography, 259. Bain left notes on his conversations with Mill about Comte’s position on women. Bain said, “Comte’s assertions about the sweetening and modifying influence of an inferior sex is a mass of vagueness, in my opinion, and his obstinately turning a deaf ear to every attempt at analysis and specific statement makes him quite impracticable.” See John Stuart Mill, “Bain’s Notes on My Controversy with Comte Respecting the Capacity and Social Position of Women,” n.d., Mill–Taylor, GB 0097, volume 41, Item #8, fol. 55 and 55 verso, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics. See also Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill. A Criticism with Personal Recollections (London: Longmans, Green, 1882), 74. Later, when Mill contemplated writing a review of Harriet Martineau’s translation of the Cours, he asked Harriet Mill for her advice. He wrote, “You dearest one will tell me what your perfect judgment & your feeling decide.” John Stuart Mill to Harriet Mill, January 9, 1854, in The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1849–73, ed. Francis E. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley, vol. 14 of The Collected Works, 126.

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1842, which had touched on the same problems of education and biology. Mill now more fully recognized that Comte was a determinist who believed that each man and woman, because of his or her sex and innate dispositions, had a natural place in society. Mill, however, remained attached to what Comte would consider an anarchical image of society, where the individual – man or woman – could freely find and create his or her proper place. Comte’s opinions revealed, according to Mill, his ignorance of the laws of the formation of the human being. Mill later wrote sadly to his friend John Pringle Nichol, “He [Comte] assumes the differences which he sees between women and men, philosophers and men of action, rich people and proletarians (or rather between the limited specimens of each class which come within the scanty means of knowledge of a recluse, whose knowledge even of books is purposely restricted) – all of these differences he assumes as ultimate, or at least necessary facts, and he grounds universal principles of sociology on them.”66 Comte’s sociology struck Mill as anti-liberal, for it was regulated by ideas of destiny and order, instead of change and progress.67 Mill was prescient when he wrote to Comte, “This discussion has left . . . permanent traces on me, and I think it will have a certain effect on the direction of my works to come.”68 In 1861, Mill wrote a book against sexist opinions, such as those held by Comte. It was no accident that its title took up a phrase that Comte had used during their debate: The Subjection of Women. Filled with ideas culled from discussions he had had with Harriet Taylor, the book covered many of the issues brought up during his debate with Comte. (Mill had carefully copied the parts of his letters to Comte and those from Comte that dealt with the woman question in a special notebook.69 ) For example, in The Subjection of Women, Mill compared female bondage with black slavery, emphasized the importance of a married life based on an equal relationship, and spoke of the liberating effects of education on women, who should be given a full opportunity to develop their faculties. For his part, Comte found their “biological and sociological disagreement” about women a challenge to his entire system. He could not believe that two members of the “elite” who agreed on matters of logic could be at odds “on one of the most fundamental questions” of sociology, “the principal elementary basis . . . of every true social hierarchy.” If Mill did not relent, the “spectacle” of their 66 67 68 69

Mill to John Pringle Nichol, September 30, 1848, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 739. However, Mill did not believe that there was inevitable progress in terms of necessary improvement. On this point, see Alan Ryan, J. S. Mill (London: Routledge, 1974), 93. Mill to Comte, December 8, 1843, CG, 2:408. Mill to Comte, January 17, 1844, CG, 2:411.

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controversy would “inspire a sort of philosophical despair about the impossibility . . . of establishing a true intellectual concordance on purely rational bases.” The Church might prove to be correct in emphasizing the insufficiency of an entirely rational foundation for a unifying moral doctrine. Comte’s hopes for a future spiritual power, where positive philosophers would work together in harmony, seemed doomed.70 The only way Comte could remain optimistic was to reassure himself that Mill could change his mind, especially after reading the second volume of the Syst`eme de politique positive, which would further explain social statics. But when Comte told Mill that his own convictions were unshakeable, Mill responded that his had been, in fact, strengthened by Comte’s objections; the Syst`eme de politique positive could add nothing to change his mind. Comte was deeply insulted.71 more strains in their re lationship After covering the pros and cons of the woman question in such a heated fashion, the correspondence between Comte and Mill became less regular. The exhilarating sense of sharing a regenerative mission was replaced by a certain coolness. Mill was particularly less enthusiastic. He even canceled his planned trip to Paris, where he was to meet Comte personally for the first time. Comte was very disappointed.72 Henceforth, the letters between the two men had to do mainly with Comte’s monetary problems and his stories of persecution at the hands of the scientists. Having decided to be more assertive, Mill boasted about the success of A System of Logic and expressed his annoyance that Comte had not read it more carefully.73 He even told him that he was contemplating writing a book on political economy, although he knew Comte scorned this discipline.74 Comte’s prejudices and blanket statements increasingly exasperated him.75 As a result of his irritation, Mill dared to be more critical of Comte’s new works. In April 1843, before their disagreement emerged, Mill called the Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique “a true model of . . . mathematical teaching,” especially because it showed how mathematical analysis could develop “the scientific spirit.” Its 70 71 72 73 74 75

Comte to Mill, October 5, 1843, CG, 2:198. Comte to Mill, December 23, 1843, CG, 2:221. Comte to Valat, November 22, 1843, CG, 2:214. Mill to Comte, December 8, 1843, January 17, 1844, April 3, 1844, CG, 2:409, 411, 415. Mill to Comte, April 3, 1844, CG, 2:415. See, for example, Mill’s reaction to Comte’s anti-Catholicism. Mill to Comte, January 17, 1844, CG, 2:412.

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symmetry made it not only “a perfect scientific treatise” but “a work of art.”76 But a few months after their argument, Mill did not hesitate to express his disapproval of the Discours sur l’esprit positif, which he opposed translating into English for fear that its attacks on religion and its abstruseness would hurt “our cause.”77 Moreover, he did not think the Discours was as good an introduction to positivism as Comte claimed it to be. A well-educated person, let alone a Parisian artisan, would have difficulty understanding it without having first read the Cours. Mill much preferred the Trait´e d’astronomie populaire, which he praised for giving intelligent nonscientists enough scientific background to enable them to comprehend the general spirit of positivism.78 Another source of irritation to Mill was Comte’s resolution not to become involved in a controversy regarding his astronomical views. In 1844, a scandal erupted in England after the publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, an anonymous book that boldly espoused a theory of evolution. Read by at least 100,000 people, the book was very popular. Yet many individuals criticized it for its amateurish scientific apparatus and its challenge to established religion. Explaining why it created a sensation, James Secord points out, “It suggested that the planets had originated in a blazing Fire-mist, that life could be created in the laboratory, [and] that humans had evolved from apes.”79 In the first chapter, the author, who turned out to be Robert Chambers, sought to support his theory of cosmogony by citing Comte’s verification of Laplace’s nebular hypothesis in the Cours de philosophie positive.80 This hypothesis allegedly proved that development was part of the logic of nature.81 Scientists throughout England were quick to respond to Chambers’s errors. While indirectly attacking Vestiges of Creation, the eminent physicist John Herschel criticized Comte publicly in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was printed in the June 21, 1845 issue of The Athenaeum. (Herschel had told Mill that A System of 76 77 78 79

80 81

Mill to Comte, April 20, 1843, CG, 2:384. Comte to Mill, April 3, 1844, CG, 2:414. Mill to Comte, November 25, 1844, CG, 2:427. James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1–2. See also David Knight, The Age of Science: The Scientific World-View in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 50–51; Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, 2d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1962), 216–19. Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 17–18. Chambers refers to Comte as “M. Compte of Paris.” On the popularity of the nebular hypothesis in the nineteenth century, see Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 142.

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Logic had inspired him to read the Cours in the first place.82 ) Herschel attacked the Cours as a “philosophical work of much mathematical pretension.” He challenged in particular Comte’s proof of the nebular hypothesis as a way of explaining the “origin of our planetary system.” Any college graduate could see that Comte’s argument was a “vicious circle.” Because it had been “eagerly received among us as the revelation of a profound analysis,” Herschel felt obliged to demonstrate that Comte’s “reasoning” was “baseless”; Comte had thrown “overboard as troublesome all those essential considerations” of important scientific laws, such as the law of cooling.83 In July, the Edinburgh Review featured a long review of the Vestiges of Creation by the geologist Adam Sedgwick, who abhorred its simplistic materialism. Sedgwick mocked Chambers for thinking that Comte was a “great mathematician” and for using his nebular hypothesis as the “basis” of his “system of nature.” Like Herschel, Sedgwick found Comte’s work “ostentatious” and the hypothesis ridiculously fallacious.84 Mill regarded both scientists’ remarks as offensive and even wrote a letter of protest to Herschel, whose criticism seemed particularly unjust and high-handed. “You have publicly imputed to M. Auguste Comte, not only a gross blunder in reasoning, but one inconsistent with the most elementary knowledge of the principles of astronomical dynamics.”85 Because Comte could never have made such an error, Herschel would do well to reexamine the Cours. Mill sent to Comte Herschel’s reply to his query as well as the issues of the Athenaeum and Edinburgh Review.86 Mill then asked Comte whether he intended to defend himself privately or publicly.87 He was shocked when Comte categorically refused to respond and discouraged him from acting in his place. Comte gave three reasons, which reflect his fundamental indifference to scholarship and his continuing problems with paranoia. First, he declared that he had made it a rule not to waste his time by getting involved in public debates, especially on scientific subjects. Second, he suggested that his scientific demonstration of Laplace’s theory was indefensible because it was full of errors and “not sufficiently positive.” Third, he attacked the two scientists personally, proclaiming 82

83 84 85 86 87

Mill had recommended the Cours to Herschel in May 1843. See his letter to Sir John F. W. Herschel, May 1, 1843, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 584. On Herschel, see Secord, Victorian Sensation, 405–10. Herschel’s Presidential Address, as cited in “Fifteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,” Athenaeum, no. 921, ( June 21, 1845): 615–16. See [Adam Sedgwick], Review of The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Edinburgh Review, 82 ( July 1845), 11, 22, 23. Mill to Sir John F. W. Herschel, July 9, 1845, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 673. Mill to Sir John F. W. Herschel, July 14, 1845, and July 17, 1845, in Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 675–77. Mill to Comte, July 18, 1845, CG, 3:399; Bain, John Stuart Mill, 81.

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that they were unworthy of even an explanatory letter from him. Herschel was acting out of “ill-will” and feelings of “personal animosity.” He was simply offended that Comte had condemned sidereal astronomy, the area of science to which he (Herschel) and his father had contributed. As a result, Herschel wished to diminish Comte’s scientific authority in any way possible, including this attack on a minor point in the Cours. As for Sedgwick, Comte accused him of colluding with Arago. Sedgwick appeared to have read the original manuscript of the paper on Laplace that Comte had presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1835. Arago had been one of the three scientists assigned to write a report on this paper, which was never done. Comte assumed that Arago had allowed Sedgwick to read the paper, for the manuscript was still in the archives of the Academy. Comte feared that if Sedgwick engaged him in a public debate, Arago would seize the opportunity to write an unfavorable report on the paper, even if it was ten years late. Comte refused to fall into this “trap.”88 It is clear that although Comte knew that his argument was mistaken, he could not take criticism from scientists, who he always imagined were acting from feelings of malevolence. Mill’s reply to Comte was uncommonly terse and angry. He agreed not to become involved in any debate but said that Herschel would not appreciate Comte’s explanation for not responding and would take his refusal as an “indirect avowal of the irrefutability of his reasoning.”89 As a person who believed public debate was most “useful” in the pursuit of truth, Mill resented the fact that Comte had embarrassed him with Herschel.90 He refused to be humiliated again. When he was about to publish the second edition of the System of Logic, Mill asked Herschel to check it for errors. On Herschel’s advice, he removed information that he had received from Comte.91 the e nd of the re lationship These intellectual problems added much tension to their relationship. What precipitated the final break between the two thinkers was the mundane but ticklish question of money. Comte was at first grateful for the money that Grote, Molesworth, and Currie sent him as a stopgap for his lost salary. Indeed, in 1844, Comte’s income rose to 11,050 francs, which was about a thousand more francs than the year before. Although he knew the Englishmen’s subsidy would disappear 88 89 90 91

Comte to Mill, August 8, 1845, CG, 3:88–9. Mill to Comte, September 22, 1843, CG, 3:402. Mill to Comte, October 4, 1844, CG, 2:425. Mill to Sir John F. W. Herschel, December 19, 1845, and February 28, 1845, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 688, 695.

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by August 1845, he never seriously considered looking for other work or reducing his expenses. The style of life to which he had become accustomed was, he claimed, crucial to his intellectual productivity. He had already more projects in his mind than he could possibly execute in his lifetime. Hoping to make ends meets through private tutoring, which he had not done since 1839, Comte once again turned to Mill for help in the winter of 1844–5. He begged him to find some rich Englishmen in Paris, who would be willing to pay ten to twenty francs an hour for private lessons. Even Comte admitted this fee was unusually high. When he had given lessons in 1818, he had charged three francs an hour.92 But he assumed that Englishmen were generous, especially because their industrializing nation was wealthy. By giving a small number of lessons, Comte hoped to minimize the amount of time he spent away from his philosophical works. Yet he worried that Arago and his coterie would blacken his reputation as a teacher.93 In contemplating other careers, Comte consulted Mill about launching a monthly review, the Revue positive, a project that his new French disciple, Emile Littr´e, had proposed.94 This journal accorded well with Comte’s increasing interest in propagating more actively the doctrines of positivism. Comte asked Mill whether he thought it would be a good idea to start this new journal and also begged him for financial aid. Littr´e figured that they would need 25,000 francs a year for the first five years.95 Comte also wanted Mill to join him and Littr´e in writing for the review. It would be important for the public to see three independent thinkers in agreement on the same doctrine. Comte pressured Mill, telling him that without his cooperation, he would not embark upon the project. Mill quickly rejected any form of collaboration. He found the whole idea of a review premature, for in his mind, all Comte had done was to establish a method and a couple of controversial principles. The only positivist rule upon which people seemed to agree was that of forbidding all speculation on first causes and limiting research to the determination of scientific laws. He reminded Comte of their divergence on other issues: “I think . . . we would find ourselves in disaccord more often and more seriously than you seem to believe and than I myself had at first hoped.”96 92 93 94 95 96

Comte to Valat, June 15, 1818, CG, 1:39. Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, January 10, 1845, February 28, 1845, CG, 2:307–8, 319, 331–2. Comte to Mill, January 10, 1845, CG, 2:320. See also Comte to Mill, January 5, 1845, CG, 2:315. Comte to Mill, January 10, 1845, CG, 2:321. Mill to Comte, January 27, 1845, CG, 2:433. Mill later upbraided Comte for stressing too much the need to avoid all references to causes. Comte to Laffitte, October 2, 1849,

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Mill was also pessimistic about acquiring financial assistance from the English. Very enthusiastic about positive philosophy, Grote would help, but Grote knew only two men who would subscribe: Molesworth and Neil Arnott.97 The latter was an inventor, philanthropist, and doctor, who occasionally took care of Mill. For pleasure, Arnott liked to organize all-male weekly dinner parties, where guests would discuss Comte’s works, especially to please his close friend, George Henry Lewes, who was a frequent guest and also an enthusiast of positivism. Arnott liked very much Comte’s classification of the sciences, which he eventually adopted.98 In his Biographical History of Philosophy, Lewes quoted from Arnott’s Elements of Physics, which he called “perhaps the most perfect specimen of positive philosophy this country has produced.”99 But outside of this circle, people were wary of positivism because they did not want to appear anti-religious. Comte’s proposed periodical might, in fact, encourage the forces of religious reaction. After receiving Mill’s letter, Comte sadly postponed his plans for the review. But he did not miss the opportunity to needle Mill about the superiority of the French, who he said were far more liberated from theology than the English. One sign was that more French people were becoming radical revolutionaries rather than Catholic reactionaries. With some astuteness, Comte noted that in France the times were favorable to a new review because a “decisive transformation” was about to occur.100 But unfortunately, he had neither the money nor the support to realize his project, which might have made positivism an important force in the Revolution of 1848. Comte did, however, seem open to Mill’s suggestion that he make money by writing for English journals. Mill offered to translate Comte’s articles and added that his friends Alexander Bain and George Henry Lewes could help too. In the summer of 1845, Comte sent

97 98

99 100

CG, 5:92. There are two chapters in Mill’s System of Logic on causes and causation. Recent scholars have also criticized Comte for pretending to abolish causality from sociology in order to achieve objectivity. “His attempt to get around Kantian relativity of knowledge by avoiding the use of causation is mere semantics. His motto, pr´evoir pour pouvoir (prevision to allow control), implies causal predictive power.” David Michael Orenstein, “Auguste Comte (1798–1857 ),” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer, 11 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 2:654. George Grote to Comte, January 29, 1845, CG, 2:432. Hock Guan Tjoa, George Henry Lewes: A Victorian Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 19; Rosemary Ashton, G. H. Lewes: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 32, 51, 71; Alexander Bain, Autobiography (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1904), 154; Bain, John Stuart Mill, 44. Bain attended these dinners put on by Arnott. G. H. Lewes, A Biographical History of Philosophy (London: George Routledge & Sons, n.d.), 651n. Comte to Mill, February 28, 1845, CG, 2:333.

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Mill a copy of a sentimental letter that he had written to Clotilde de Vaux, whom he had been seeing regularly for the past two months. He called it his “Sainte Clotilde” and asked Mill if he thought it was appropriate for publication in a journal.101 The “epistle,” written in honor of the feast day of her patron saint, explained that despite positivism’s anti-theological stance, it would “popularize the worship of memories even more than Catholicism did.”102 Positivism would attract women in particular because it would call for their adoration, revive the social role they had played under Catholicism (especially during the Middle Ages), and make them the auxiliaries of the spiritual power in its constant struggle against the temporal power. Mill discreetly avoided reopening the woman question and quickly returned the essay, with the excuse that it was far too anti-religious for any English publication. Comte seemed disappointed. By mid-1845, Comte was very depressed, experiencing bouts of insomnia, stomach illness, and weakness. The difficulties of beginning his new work on political philosophy (the Syst`eme de politique positive) certainly contributed to this melancholy, as did the start of his relationship with Clotilde de Vaux. But he was also worried about Mill’s lack of enthusiasm in corresponding with him, for during the past three years, their “fraternal outpouring of emotions” had been one of his “most precious consolations.”103 Comte’s monetary situation was another cause of concern. No admissions examiner from the Ecole Polytechnique was about to resign to make room for him. And although he had contacted twenty people, including General Tholos´e, he had not had much success in arranging to give private lessons.104 From May to August, he had only one student, who gave him altogether 160 francs.105 Mill and Grote could not find him a single English student, for rich young men generally went to Oxford or Cambridge, which did not require any special preparation.106 Blaming the “meanness” of his enemies and the “deadly inertia” of many of his friends, Comte still refused to change his habits or economize in any way for fear of giving his oppressors the victory they sought.107 Suppressing his few diversions would make his solitary life even more 101

102 104 105 106 107

Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:58. The essay’s formal title was “Lettre philosophique sur la comm´emoration sociale.” He included it in the first volume of the Syst`eme because he believed it contained the seeds of the Religion of Humanity. See Syst`eme, 1: xxii, xxxiv–xxxix. He also put it in his Testament. See Auguste Comte, Testament d‘Auguste Comte avec les documents qui s‘y rapportent: Pi`eces justificatives, pri`eres quotidiennes, confessions annuelles, correspondance avec Mme de Vaux. 2d ed. (Paris, 1896), 240a –240i . Testament (1896 ed.), 240f , 240g . 103 Comte to Mill, May 15, 1845, CG, 3:6. General Tholos´e to Comte, February 2, 1845, MAC. List entitled “El`eves priv´es d’Auguste Comte,” MAC. The student was M. Rebillot. Mill to Comte, April 26, 1845, CG, 3:387. Comte to Mill, May 15, 1845, CG, 3:7.

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miserable and endanger his intellectual faculties. Full of self-pity, he thought it unfair that just as he was on the verge of executing his great works, he was stymied by pedestrian material problems. Unable to accept his unfortunate situation, he persisted in clinging to the illusion that he would regain his position at the Ecole Polytechnique. Comte’s behavior surprised Mill. In January 1845, he complained to his friend Sarah Austin that Comte was obstinately “following his own course, regardless not only of giving offence . . . but of compromising his means of livelihood.” Annoyed that Comte would not curtail his frankness in public, which brought him only more trouble, Mill concluded, “He is a man one can only serve in his own way.”108 Massin had reached the same conclusion years before. Comte continued to tax Mill’s patience. In late June, 1845, he admitted to Mill that he had been secretly counting on the continuation of the two-hundred pound subsidy he had received in 1844 from Grote, Molesworth, and Currie.109 Considering that the reasons for the subsidy had not changed, these “spontaneous elements of the new temporal power” should continue to support him until he was out of danger, for society should protect the spiritual power and its philosophical works.110 Indeed, their patronage constituted the “duty of the rich toward the poor.”111 He wrote, “I hoped, I must confess, that the souls of the elite would feel the necessity of not letting die or slacken, in the only favorable center, the unique seat of true philosophical energy that exists today, really the only one who provides people with solid intellectual guarantees against both anarchical unrest and retrograde tendencies.”112 Mill told Comte that he found it difficult to request more financial assistance from Molesworth because he had lost a great deal of money in the London and Westminster Review, a journal that Mill had asked him to help establish years before. Mill did not tell Comte that tensions also existed in his relationship with Grote. Moreover, he glossed over the fact that Grote vehemently opposed Comte’s social doctrines, philosophy of history, and religion.113 Instead, Mill gave Comte the impression that Grote as well as Currie might continue to subsidize him in order to spare him the trouble and loss of time he would experience in looking for other means of existence. Mill continued to remind Comte that if he needed financial help, he could turn to him 108 109 110 111 112 113

J. S. Mill to Mrs. Austin, January 18, 1845, in Ross, Three Generations, 1:200. Frederic Harrison, introduction to The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, ed. Harriet Martineau, 2 vols. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1896), 1:xiv. Comte to Mill, June 27, 1845, CG, 3:48. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:74. Comte to Mill, June 27, 1845, CG, 3:49–50. Bain, John Stuart Mill, 75, 80–84. See also Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:167.

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as well. “You know that in an emergency, I am there.”114 Mill’s words greatly heartened Comte, who was by this point having difficulty maintaining his mental stability. Now he was “almost” completely certain he would get the subsidy from the Englishmen for another year. To clinch the deal, Mill insisted that Comte assure them that he would not need their patronage after a certain date. In mid-July 1845, with his money rapidly running out and his new friend Clotilde de Vaux clamoring to borrow money, Comte wrote the required letter explaining to his English patrons that his situation was only temporary and they would not have to help him indefinitely.115 Comte was surprised when in late September 1845, he received the devastating news that no aid would be forthcoming after all from England, except for a six-hundred-franc gift from Grote, who explained that this sum was his final gift to the “cause” of “honesty and philosophy against oppression and cabal.”116 Grote, in truth, found Comte too opinionated and narrow-minded. Moreover, he told a friend that Comte’s “morality is the commonplace of Catholic divines of the present day – divinising chastity, and making light of individual prudence; and he applies this standard to judge of the morality of Athens and Rome, as if all the points on which they differed from it were points of comparative corruption.” As an ancient historian and a Protestant, Grote could not brook this approach. Grote further complained that Comte knew no history because he “has never gone through any careful study of the evidence, nor ever read anything beyond the expositions of Bossuet and Montesquieu, and a few such others.” They were too Catholic for Grote’s taste. He wrote to a friend, “Comte has banished the Gods, but he breathes and extols their atmosphere of morality as if it were purity itself.”117 Utterly shocked by Grote’s supposed lack of generosity, Comte begged Mill to ask Molesworth once again.118 Mill, very annoyed by 114 115

116

117

118

Mill to Comte, July 8, 1845, CG, 3:397. Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:63–6. Mill also wrote supportive letters. See Mill to George Grote, July 1845, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 679. On his expenses, see Comte’s entries for August, October, and November 1845 in his notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes,” MAC. Grote to Comte, September 12, 1845, MAC. See also Mill to Comte, September 22, 1845, CG, 3:402. Comte later explained to a disciple that Grote furnished half of the 1844 contribution from the three Englishmen. Comte to Hutton, January 7, 1854, CG, 7:168. Grote’s contribution this time amounted to twenty-four pounds. Clarke, George Grote, 183. Grote to George Cornewall Lewis, 1851, excerpt in Clarke, George Grote, 183–4. Despite these criticisms, Grote’s History of Greece, published between 1846 and 1851, seemed to embrace Comte’s philosophy of history because it traced three stages in the development of the Greek mind. One reviewer even referred to it as positivist. T. R. Wright, The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 62. Comte to Mill, September 24, 1845, CG, 3:133.

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Comte’s pushiness, refused. He explained that the Englishmen did not consider Comte’s case an emergency and still worried that they would have to support him permanently. In addition, Molesworth and the Grotes had not been on speaking terms since 1844 because Harriet Grote had inadvertently insulted Molesworth’s new wife.119 Comte wrote Mill a remarkably insolent reply on December 18, 1845. Reminding Mill of the sacrifices he had already made in his private life to serve humanity, he refused to live on the three to four shillings a day that rich, avid men, living in “the midst of opulence,” prescribed to “thinkers.” He blamed his situation on “the meanness of my enemies, the weakness of my bosses, and the half-heartedness of my friends.” Most of all, he reproached his “opulent” English patrons, who could “easily neutralize with a few subsidies the persecution organized” against him. He felt obliged by the “high moral magistrature inherent” in his “philosophical character” to “judge” these three men. This judgment would appear in his next work. Boasting of his importance to the reorganization of the West, especially now that “communism” was becoming a great threat to order, Comte maintained that the three Englishmen’s dereliction of their duty to protect him reflected the “deplorable absence of true convictions” characteristic of the “present era.” Comte went further, casting aspersions on English intellectuals, English politicians, and English people in general, whom he accused of being selfish, narrow-minded, and anti-European.120 Comte concluded that his English patrons were more to blame for his cruel situation than his French employer, that is, the government, which had no awareness of his philosophical importance. Mill furiously countered his points one by one. First he insisted that Comte’s “severe moral condemnation” of the three Englishmen was unfair because they had never been his disciples, as Comte assumed, and thus were under no obligation to continue to help him. Their admiration for him was in fact limited; although they appreciated extending the positive method to the study of society and the substitution of the scientific viewpoint for the religious one, they, like Mill, strongly disagreed with his social doctrines. Thus their refusal to continue the subsidy was not due to weak convictions or nationalism, but to their differences of opinion. Again, Mill suggested that without the prior establishment of ethology, “the positive science of man,” which could reveal the laws of human nature, Comte’s sociological theories remained weak. Comte had failed to develop a viable theory of intellectual and moral faculties. Finally, Mill berated Comte for jealously and unkindly deriding the wealth of his patrons. Mill insisted that they 119 120

Grote, The Philosophical Radicals, 73–6. Comte to Mill, December 18, 1845, CG, 3:244, 238, 240, 243–7.

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had a “right” to suggest the possibility of his economizing, for they had helped him financially. In discussing their differences of opinion, Mill concluded, “We do agree on your incontestable right to work from now on for your private comfort, even if you have to delay the rest of your speculative works.”121 Comte’s angry response to this letter, written on January 23, 1846, was so significant that he made two copies for himself.122 Comte pointed out that Mill was wrong in arguing that people had to agree completely with positivism to lend him support. Even in that future stage, “an entire unity of doctrine can never reign” due to differences of character, social situation, and education.123 What was most important was that his collaborators agree on his method and his theory of history, not his doctrine. To Comte, his English patrons were in sufficient accord with his principles to make them morally obliged to support him, and Mill’s reasons for not helping him establish the positivist journal were unacceptable. The English, in Comte’s eyes, were simply acting in a nationalistic and xenophobic matter. Very insulted and hurt by Mill’s suggestion that he needed to save money, Comte laid out his financial situation. He explained that at the beginning of 1846, he cut his yearly payments to his wife from three to two thousand francs and reduced his own expenditures by a thousand francs. But especially as his fifty-franc loans to Clotilde de Vaux were increasing, a secret that he did not tell Mill, he could not further decrease his budget without falling into misery. Indeed, from January through October 1846, he spent 7,500 francs, which included 2,000 francs to his wife, 1,600 francs to his landlord, 1,500 francs for food, 400 francs to his maid (Sophie Bliaux), and 230 francs for his subscription to the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien, where he listened to opera.124 He claimed that his expenses were not unreasonable; he had a “right” to his few pleasures – pleasures that were far less numerous than those of his comrades.125 In his bitterness, Comte became threatening. He lambasted wealthy people for being egoistic and foolish in not allying themselves with thinkers such as himself who were seeking to mitigate the class conflict. They obviously wished to escape their “moral obligations.” As 121 122 123 124

125

Mill to Comte, January 12, 1846, CG, 3:413, 415, 416. The copies exist in the MAC. Comte to Mill, January 23, 1846, CG, 3:295. The date of January 21 in the Correspondance g´en´erale is erroneous. Comte, “Budget annuel,” October, 1846, MAC. Bliaux earned four hundred francs a year. See notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, 1854,” MAC. Sometimes Comte wrote her name Bliot. See signature for her on page one of his register of baptisms entitled “Religion de l’Humanit´e: Sacrement de la pr´esentation,” MAC. Also see Th´eaˆ tre Royale Italien, renewal notices, MAC. Comte to Mill, January 23, 1846, CG, 3:299.

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a result, once the “legitimate demands of the proletarians” were systematized by positivism, the position of the upper class would be in danger.126 As Comte knew, this letter of January 23, 1846 marked a watershed in his relationship with Mill. He explained to Mill that he was “painfully affected by the display of the most unfortunate discord which has yet arisen between us, for it concerns feelings as much as ideas.”127 Comte’s anger had unleashed a torrent of insults aimed at Mill and his friends. Mill now was deeply ashamed. Rumors flew that he was aiding a crazy, rude man, whose superficiality was well-known to the French.128 He had to apologize to his friends for Comte’s ungrateful behavior. He told Grote, “In Comte’s position I think my conduct would have been different.”129 Mill wrote to Comte only a few more times. In a letter of March 1846, written in response to Comte’s offensive letter of January, Mill too acknowledged that their differences were grave because they now extended from “ideas” to “feelings.”130 He argued against all of Comte’s points, especially the thesis that he was an English chauvinist. As if reminding Comte how little he knew of him, he explained that he was famous for his criticisms of the English national character. In addition, Mill mocked Comte’s assertion that the positivist position on women was closer to “reality” because it accorded with popular ideas, culled from “universal experience.”131 Mill pointed out that Comte would not accept the truth of religious opinions simply because many people held them. A few months later, in May 1846, Comte informed Mill of the death of Clotilde de Vaux, whose name, he hoped, would become “inseparable” from his in the “memories of humanity.”132 When Mill did not respond, Comte became worried by this rare silence and wrote him again in August. Mill sent a terse letter of condolence. Comte was touched, but again complained, in a letter of September 3, 1846, of his material situation, blaming it partly on the “lukewarmness of almost all my friends.”133 In a period of depression, this time due partly to Taylor’s grave illness, Mill did not bother to reply or to visit Comte when he went 126 128 129

130 131 132 133

Ibid., 300. 127 Ibid., 292. Mill to George Grote, January 1, 1846, and Mill to John Austin, April 1, 1845, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 690, 714. Comte to George Grote [ July, 1845], in Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 679. See also Mill’s embarrassment in his letter to George Grote, January 1, 1846, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 690. Mill to Comte, March 26, 1846, CG, 4:217. Comte to Mill, January 23, 1846, CG, 3:297. Comte to Mill, May 6, 1846, CG, 4:6. Comte to Mill, September 3, 1846, CG, 4:35.

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to Paris.134 He was also preoccupied, for he was completing his twovolume Principles of Political Economy. In late January 1847, Comte begged their mutual friend George Henry Lewes to find out the reason for Mill’s silence.135 Lewes sought out Mill, who suggested that the differences between Comte and himself had dampened his enthusiasm for their correspondence. Lewes relayed this information to Comte.136 Finally, in May 1847, Comte received from Mill a very impersonal and perfunctory letter, concerning the practical measures that should be taken to save the Irish who were suffering from the famine. In a section denouncing paternalistic government, Mill criticized the philanthropy practiced by the rich because “in general what one does for people is not useful to them unless it reinforces what they are doing for themselves.”137 This letter represented, in effect, a rejection of Comte’s purely philosophical approach to regeneration as well as his reliance on charity to pursue his mission. Comte regarded Mill’s “economic screed on Ireland” as “strange” and realized their “liaison” was over.138 He refused to respond. Thus Mill’s letter of May 17, 1847 was the last communication between the two men. Comte later asked Lewes for news of Mill. Lewes sensitively responded, “Of John Mill, I have seen nothing; all his old friends seem dropping off one by one.”139 Lewes admitted he was “afraid to make any direct inquiry” as to Mill’s “real feelings” regarding Comte.140 a f inal analysis of their re lationship At first glance, it might seem strange that these two great thinkers, coming from very different backgrounds, should become friends. Yet their friendship fulfilled certain needs in their lives and careers. It is undeniable that each looked to the other for intellectual gain. But it is also evident that they sought to develop a close relationship for psychological reasons. Such reasons led to their estrangement as well. As Mill explained in his Autobiography, the differences between them would not have “led to discontinuance of intercourse” if they had 134

135 136 137 138 139 140

Bain, John Stuart Mill, 91. See comments from Lewes that confirm this impression, Lewes to Comte, February 18 (?), 1847, in The Letters of George Henry Lewes, ed. William Baker, 2 vols. (Victoria: University of Victoria Press, 1995), 1:142–4. See also Oscar A. Haac, “A Foreword to the Correspondence,” in The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, ed. Oscar A. Haac (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995), xviii. Comte to Lewes, January 28, 1847, CG, 4:98–100. Lewes to Comte, February 18 (?), 1847, in Baker, ed., Letters, 1:143. Mill to Comte, May 17, 1847, CG, 4:242. Comte to Lewes, April 12, 1848, CG, 4:150. Lewes to Comte, March 2, 1848, in Baker, ed., Letters, 1:165. Lewes to Comte, March 26, 1847, in Baker, ed., Letters, 1:144.

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been on “matters of simple doctrine. But they were chiefly on those points of opinion which blended in both of us with our strongest feelings and determined the entire direction of our aspirations.”141 Thus psychological factors at times played a bigger role than intellectual factors in the development and demise of their friendship. These factors help explain the bitterness of their rupture. When Mill first wrote to Comte, the latter found himself very isolated. He was making no headway in gaining the respect of his scientific colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique or admission into the Academy of Sciences. Worst of all, the Cours de philosophie positive attracted little attention. To create a protective barrier between himself and the external world, he had adopted the regime of “cerebral hygiene,” which had made him more reclusive than ever. His preoccupation with his own problems and unwillingness to communicate created havoc in his marriage, which finally ended in Massin’s departure from the household in the summer of 1842. Thus Comte had desperately needed a friend and disciple who could encourage him and give him moral support. Mill seemed the perfect candidate. He had the scientific background that was crucial for understanding Comte’s doctrine and did not share the shortcomings of Comte’s previous principal disciple, Gustave d’Eichthal, who was too young and undecided about the direction of his life. Most importantly, Mill responded to Comte’s desire for the esteem of a renowned, respected intellectual. Before meeting him, Comte had frequently expressed his respect for the Benthamite tradition in which Mill was brought up. Thus the admiration and friendship of a man such as Mill fulfilled Comte’s personal needs at a critical moment in his life. As for Mill, this friendship seems at first incongruous. Brought up in the English liberal tradition, he believed in the importance of the individual and his or her freedom of expression. Since his early childhood, his father, James Mill, and his father’s friend Jeremy Bentham had planned for him to carry on the principles of the Benthamite system, which stressed the individual’s selfish pursuit of his or her own pleasure and the need to limit government to creating the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Yet Mill found many of these ideas superficial and weak. The Benthamite doctrine did not seem to take into account complex moral questions or the multifaceted nature of the individual. Mill rebelled against a philosophy based on selfishness and a narrow view of happiness.142 Part of his dissatisfaction stemmed from the deep need he felt to revolt 141 142

Mill, Autobiography, 219. John M. Robson, The Improvement of Mankind: The Social and Political Thought of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 118–23.

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against his father as well as Bentham. In harmony with an age that looked with favor upon the sentiments, he faulted his father for a lack of affection. His desire to question parental authority shaped to a certain extent his discontent with liberalism. Disenchanted with the system in which he was brought up, Mill was attracted by the positivist system. Comte had demonstrated that an approach which stressed only the selfish pursuits and calculations of the individual was superficial, outdated, and insufficient. It did not take into account the innate benevolent affections that must direct the intellect or the new problems of the postrevolutionary epoch, when the consensus among individuals was fragile.143 After having read Comte, Mill was convinced that agreement on certain important principles was the key to a healthy society. He no longer believed in the Benthamite concept that each person was the best judge of his or her own interest.144 Thus an idea that was far from his own liberal tradition seemed most attractive to Mill – the idea of a spiritual power having supreme authority to dictate to others the intellectual and moral principles on which society depended. Comte was important in the intellectual development of Mill because he offered a new mission of reconstruction which seemed superior to the dry and critical analyses of his father and late-eighteenth century philosophers. In short, Comte furnished Mill with what he needed: theories about society and the importance of the emotions that contradicted those of his childhood. Such theories constituted a powerful weapon in his rebellion against his father. Because of the psychological needs of Mill and Comte, their friendship continued to grow, fed by the pleasures of intellectual discourse. In Mill, Comte found a brilliant man to whom he could explain his personal problems and expose his ideas. Mill gave him encouragement not only to face his persecutors at the Ecole Polytechnique but also to write his new works. Mill was enthusiastic about Comte’s positive method, his philosophy of science, his science of society, his law of history, his idea of relativism, his emphasis on construction and synthesis, his recognition of the need for strong beliefs in an age of transition, and his principle that an educated elite should have a large role in the direction of society. By 1843, Mill was telling his friends that Comte was “by far the first speculative thinker of the age.”145 Feeling themselves drawn closer together emotionally, Comte and Mill rejoiced in sharing a common mission of transforming the world through a new science of society. They were certain 143

144 145

Mill to J. P. Nichol, September 30, 1848, in Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 738–9. Moreover, Comte had shown that the intellect must serve benevolent emotions, which played an important role in human behavior. Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill, 98. Mill to Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, March 27, 1843, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 579.

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their accord signalled the beginning of the third era of history. This devotion to building harmony among members of the intellectual and scientific elite sustained their correspondence for six years. Yet as the years passed, differences arose. One source of continuing tension was that Mill, like Comte’s former mentor Saint-Simon, was cautious about bringing up religious issues, which he knew would estrange his audience. Comte, however, tended to flaunt his antitheological position. Politics was also a problematic issue, for Mill did not share Comte’s hatred for the parliamentary system and reform movements. At first, they tried to paper over such differences. This modus vivendi worked in the short run because Mill tended to be submissive and Comte self-protective; both were so hopeful about the possible consequences of their convergence on many points that they preferred to ignore signs of discord. But Mill felt increasingly uncomfortable with Comte’s enthusiasm about his being a disciple, for he suspected that their views on social statics varied to a dangerous extent. After almost breaking up over the question of phrenology, they finally realized that their intellectual alliance was over when they disagreed on the related issue of the equality of the sexes. Unlike Comte, Mill believed that most individual, gender, and national differences were not innate but were due to circumstances that could change. Training and education could eliminate many differences. Taking into account the effect of experience on the formation of the individual, the psychology of associationism, not physiology, should be the basis of the science of society; ethology could serve as the bridge between associationism and the human sciences.146 Mill never lost his faith in Helv´etius’s principle that all human beings were naturally equal in terms of capacity. Without this principle, there would be no reason to work for social reforms and progress.147 Mill’s view was anathema to Comte, the opponent of psychology and the advocate of social hierarchy. But Mill’s support of associationism, whereby consciousness derives from a combination of elements that can be traced to experience, would have pleased his father, who advanced this English psychology. Finally, relations between the two men worsened to the point where Comte became reckless in his treatment of Mill. In his Autobiography, Mill explained that he stopped writing to Comte because he saw it was no longer profitable. “I was the first to slacken correspondence; he was the first to drop it. I found, and he probably 146

147

Mill, Autobiography, 147, 233; L´evy-Bruhl, ed., introduction, xxix; David Lewisohn, “Mill and Comte on the Methods of Social Science,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (April–June 1972): 319; Rylance, Victorian Psychology, 100–101; Capaldi, Mill, 177. Bain, John Stuart Mill, 79, 84; Iris Wessel Mueller, John Stuart Mill and French Thought (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), 113–14.

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found likewise, that I could do no good to his mind, and that all the good he could do to mine, he did by his books.”148 He realized that Comte was closed-minded, ungrateful, and egotistical. Speaking about him to his friend Sarah Austin, Mill said, “[He] is disposed to like those who give him the appreciation he thinks unjustly withheld by others: reste a` savoir whether his liking would hold unless kept up by homage or services to himself.”149 Comte was similarly resentful. In 1844, he had been certain that his alliance with Mill was finally launching the positivist school. In the Discours sur l’esprit positif, the manifesto of this new school, he had even declared that his “eminent friend” John Stuart Mill was “fully associated . . . in the direct foundation of the new philosophy.”150 Thus Mill’s abandonment of this project was a source of great disillusionment. Littr´e would take Mill’s place as Comte’s most famous supporter, but because he, like Comte, was French, he did not give the movement the same European flavor that Mill did. Comte firmly believed that positivism had to be an Occidental movement; its mission was to generate all of Western Europe and from there, the world. Most importantly, the rupture with Mill challenged his conviction that positivism would inevitably achieve social harmony. At the time of their disagreement over the woman question, Comte had voiced his concern: “It would be a sad augury for the social efficacy of the new philosophy to see today its two principal organs unable to agree sufficiently on such a fundamental doctrine . . . ; the spectacle of such a divergence would constitute a powerful weapon for the logic of our serious adversaries.”151 Comte should have recognized that positivism was no better at creating consensus than conservatism and liberalism. Yet to explain this failure, Comte instead found faults in Mill’s personality. He believed Mill had turned against him because he was “ashamed” of his refusal to participate in the Revue positive and of his inability to persuade his friends to subsidize him.152 Mill was, moreover, fickle, disloyal, and passionless.153 Comte also worried about their divergent interests. He was certain that Mill’s strong fascination with political economy not only prevented him from embracing positivism more fervently but contributed to the year-long “cooling” of their relationship.154 Comte may have perused Mill’s Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political 148 149 150 152 153 154

Mill, Autobiography, 219. John Stuart Mill to Sarah Austin, February 26, 1844, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 622. Trait´e d’astronomie populaire, 27n1. 151 Comte to Mill, December 23, 1843, CG, 2:222. Comte to Lewes, January 28, 1847, CG, 4:99. Comte claimed that an English person, perhaps one of the Grotes or Austins, had warned him that Mill was fickle and disloyal. Comte to Lewes, January 28, 1847, CG, 4:99. See Comte to Lewes, April 7, 1847, CG, 4:109.

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Economy, which was published in 1844 and is still in his library.155 He concluded in 1848 that Mill was “only a metaphysician, who felt, in his way, the intellectual value of positivism, . . . without understanding its social significance.”156 To Comte, it was absurd to study political economy because in doing so, one artificially separated people’s material existence from their intellectual and moral life. The upshot was a neglect of social problems.157 A component of metaphysics, political economy could not be an independent science.158 Likewise, logic, though somewhat less metaphysical, could not be an independent science because a method could not be taught apart from a doctrine. Forgetting that he had peppered the Cours and the Discours with references to Mill’s partnership, Comte accused Mill of having simply used him “to decorate his Logic just as Cousin had used Hegel to rejuvenate himself in 1828.”159 In the years to come, Comte would be increasingly confronted with the phenomenon of people, such as Mill, who were enthusiastic about the scientific aspects of positivism but could not brook its political and social doctrines. The problem for him would be whether to accept such persons as disciples. He had insinuated to Mill that complete adherence was not necessary or desirable, but his final opinion of Mill suggests otherwise. Mill, for his part, could not tolerate their disagreements.160 As the years passed, enmity between the two thinkers grew. Comte knew Mill would not approve of the Syst`eme de politique positive. This book indeed confirmed Mill’s fear that despite their agreement on many theoretical points, their ideas on the practical and political aspects of sociology diverged. He accepted Comte’s idea that philosophers should be a kind of spiritual power, who would instruct the masses on political and social matters. However, he objected to Comte’s plan to organize them into “a kind of corporate hierarchy.” Overlooking the values of liberty and individualism, Comte wanted “the yoke of general opinion, wielded by an organized body of spiritual teachers and rulers” to be “supreme” over every thought and 155 156 157

158

159 160

See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Comte to Lewes, April 12, 1848, CG, 4:150. Comte, Calendrier Positiviste, 4th ed. (Paris, 1852), 26. See also Congreve, “Personal Recollections of Auguste Comte and Account of French Reception,” n.d. Positivist Papers, vol. XXXVI, Add. Mss. 45259, fol. 6, British Library. See Pierre Arnaud, CG, 2:435nCCLXXIV. In constrast to Mill, Comte also did not think that political economy could make predictions. See Paul Weirich, “Comte et Mill sur l’´economie politique,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52, no. 203 (1998): 79–83. Comte to Lewes, April 12, 1848, CG, 4:150. Raeder points out the paradox that Mill seemed more bothered by their divergences than Comte, who suggested that complete conformity was not possible and that the Englishman should be less rigid. Linda C. Raeder, John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 63.

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action of each member of society. Mill thus found the Syst`eme “the completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism, which ever yet emanated from a human brain.”161 Comte was clearly a “moralityintoxicated man.”162 For his part, Comte could not believe that Mill had once proclaimed “the intellectual superiority of the new philosophy, especially in regard to method,”163 but now found his political doctrines “a mystical and tyrannical deviation.”164 One could not dismember a system. In a way, Mill would agree with him. Their rupture was a failure for him as well. He had always assumed that political doctrines and methodology were inseparable, and if people agreed on the latter, they would accept the former. After all, the aim of A System of Logic was to create a method for induction that would mold unanimous opinions among the elite of educated people, who would thus be considered authorities. They would pass their opinions on to the common people.165 Comte was upset precisely because people at large were not reading about positivism. Depressed by the lack of interest his work was generating abroad, he accused Mill in 1855 of being largely responsible for “the conspiracy of silence against my Politique in the periodical press in England.”166 This attack was not completely warranted, for one of Mill’s philosophy students, William Henry Smith, had written a very long review of the Cours in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. His reaction to Comte’s oeuvre was mixed. He praised Comte’s “great intellectual power” and “singular originality” but criticized his “intolerable” style, gross generalizations, disregard for theology, and insufficient appreciation of the complexity of the mind.167 Comte responded in kind to such criticisms. He condemned Mill publicly for being a flighty literary hack, who remained stuck in the eighteenth century; he could not overcome his “revolutionary habits,” faith in practical reformism, and belief in individualism.168 Like many other French thinkers, Comte treated the liberalism and Protestantism of Mill as something foreign to France, a Catholic country, which had a tradition of a strong church and state. Because of Mill’s obsolete, metaphysical, political, and religious beliefs, he could 161 162 163 165 166 167

168

Mill, Autobiography, 219, 221. John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 139–40. Syst`eme, 4:540. 164 Comte to Audiffrent, August 23, 1855, CG, 8:104. Raeder, John Stuart Mill, 79–80; Mill to C´elestin de Bligni`eres, January 22, 1862, Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, vol. 15, 768–9. Comte to Henry Hutton, December 31, 1855, CG, 8:169. [William Smith], “Comte,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 53 (March 1843): 397–414. See especially p. 398. See also Bain, John Stuart Mill, 71; Cashdollar, Transformation of Theology, 31–3. Syst`eme, 4:541.

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not embrace the new generation’s mission of creating a “true moral power” and a more interventionist system for the nineteenth century.169 He was merely another timid supporter of the status quo.170 Confronted with all these vitriolic criticisms, Mill pointed out to his old friend Gustave d’Eichthal in 1864 that Comte was “unjust . . . in general against all those who had ceased to please him.”171 Mill’s and Comte’s comments reflect the fact that their personalities were indeed very different. Comte was quick to jump to conclusions and held tenaciously to his opinions. Mill did not share these dogmatic tendencies. He was able to live with doubt. Priding himself on having an open mind, Mill said at one point that his best mental habit was “that of never accepting half-solutions of difficulties as complete; never abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until it was cleared up; never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain unexplored, because they did not appear important; never thinking that I perfectly understood any part of a subject until I understood the whole.”172 The clash of opinions that Mill found revivifying was a threat to Comte, who was not eager to learn from others because he thought he already possessed the truth. To Mill, one could not be original without this willingness to learn.173 He would never have followed Comte’s cerebral hygiene. If they had ever met each other, their personalities would have undoubtedly clashed with even greater force than they did in their letters. The influence that each thinker exercised on the other is difficult to gauge. It was Mill’s friendship, especially his encouragement, that most touched Comte, curing him of “a certain shame of appearing too sensitive.”174 This sentiment of fraternity was linked to Comte’s new intellectual enterprise because the Syst`eme de politique positive aimed to “systematize our essential feelings” and encourage social interaction.175 In a way, Mill helped to develop Comte’s emotional life. The Religion of Humanity, with its exaltation of the emotions, did not derive solely from Comte’s love for Clotilde de Vaux but also from his deep affection for John Stuart Mill, who shared his wish to shape the religious character of their age.176 Mill’s direct intellectual influence on Comte was limited because the Frenchman had deliberately set up barriers to prevent others from having an impact on his system of thought. His regime of 169 170 171 172 174 175 176

Comte to Lewes, October 15, 1848, CG, 4:195. Comte to Lewes, April 12, 1848, CG, 4:150. Mill to Gustave d’Eichthal., March 30, 1864, in The Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, vol. 15, 931. John Stuart Mill, cited in Bain, John Stuart Mill, 144. 173 Bain, John Stuart Mill, 146. Comte to Mill, August 8, 1845, CG, 3:90. Comte to Clotilde de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 2:81. Raeder, John Stuart Mill, 41.

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cerebral hygiene was designed to protect his originality, which he felt had been belittled during his relationship with Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians. Because he had reached his intellectual maturity and the main outlines of his philosophy were set, debates over his ideas struck him as “unfruitful.”177 Having built a system, Comte believed that he could not concede one point without damaging all the other principles to which it was connected. And the whole thrust of his system was to prove that because of its scientific basis, it was stronger than all others and would not change in a era of instability.178 Nevertheless, Comte’s creation of a new science of morality and his stress on altruism in the 1850s seem to have been at least in part a response to Mill’s criticism that he neglected to create ethology and especially a theory of moral faculties. Comte intended to elaborate on his theory of morality in the second and third volumes of his last work, the Synth`ese subjective, which he never completed. He did, however, finish the first volume on positivist logic, which may have been inspired by the example of Mill’s System of Logic. In this work, Mill had battled against the intuitionists, who went beyond experience in their search for truth and tended to uphold conservative doctrines. Comte wished to show that although inductive thought and reasoning on the basis of experience were supremely important, emotions also played a role in scientific discovery. Mill was simultaneously attracted and repelled by Comte’s fairly closed system of thought. Mill told him as early as 1842, “You scare me by the unity and completion of your convictions, which seem . . . never to need confirmation on the part of any other intelligence.”179 Mill had already seen the same phenomenon of dogmatism in Comte’s predecessor in his life, Jeremy Bentham. Even John Austin, a mutual friend, had told Mill that Comte was “like Mr. Bentham (of whom he constantly reminds me)” because “he is so wedded to his own devices and so full of presumptuous contempt for all which has been done by others, that I fear he would not be moved even by your insinuations.”180 Mill’s ambivalence toward Comte explains his vacillations during the two phases of his experience with Comte. In the first phase of his encounter, which took place around 1829, he went from a cold initial response to a very warm reaction, while in the second phase, beginning in 1837, he followed the inverse direction, going from hot to cold. It seems that Mill’s overwhelming desire for certitude had led him to be temporarily seduced by the solidity of the positivist system, although Comte’s notion of an imposed consensus ran against 177 178 180

See, for example, Comte to Valat, October 5, 1841, CG, 2:20. L´evy-Bruhl, introduction, xii–xiv. 179 Mill to Comte, December 15, 1842, CG, 2:375. John Austin to Mill, n.d., excerpt in Mill, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 654n6.

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his liberal opinions. Positivism seemed to speak to different aspects of Mill’s psyche, for it combined elements of scientism, materialism, progressivism, and an emphasis on induction on the one hand with spiritualism, idealism, a concern for social order, and a stress on deduction on the other hand. Thus, very often, Comte confused Mill by appealing to the various sides of his character. Mill, whose openmindedness often led him to indecision, did not succeed in removing himself from Comte’s power until the disdain of Harriet Taylor and his friends helped him to see the dangers. In the end, Mill’s very critical judgment of Comte was very similar to what it had been in the beginning. Yet even after their break, Comte’s ideas continued to be a powerful force in Mill’s mind. As John Robson and Nicholas Capaldi have noted, Mill was forever an advocate of Comte’s scientific method; his inverse deductive method of beginning analyses in the social sciences with historical generalizations connected to the laws of human nature; and his philosophy of the sciences, including his hierarchic scheme. Mill believed only Aristotle and Bacon had done more to improve the “theory of scientific procedures.”181 Mill assimilated Comte’s ideas not only on philosophy but on society, history, morality, and religion.182 Although Mill never wrote on ethology or sociology as he had intended in order to complete Comte’s work, he did incorporate positivist ideas into his writings on political economy. Comte led Mill to recognize that generalizations about the economy had to take into account basic social truths.183 In his Principles of Political Economy of 1848, he applied Comte’s distinction between social statics and social dynamics to the science of political economy, which he told Bain was “a great improvement.”184 Comte’s associated distinction between order and progress appeared not only in this book but in a System of Logic and several of Mill’s later works.185 For example, in On Liberty (1859) he expressed the 181

182 183 184

185

See also Mill’s evaluation of his position in a letter to Comte’s young disciple, Barbot de Chement, August 7, 1854, The Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, vol. 14, 237. See also Robson, The Improvement of Mankind, 97, 105; Capaldi, Mill, 168; Ryan, J. S. Mill, 93–4. Frederic Harrison, “John Stuart Mill (Suite et fin),” RO, 2nd ser., 17 (November 1898), 359. Capaldi, Mill, 179, 196. These are Bain’s words. See Bain, John Stuart Mill, 88. Using Comtean expressions, Mill noted that the “Statics” of political economy was the study of production, distribution, and exchange, which were considered to be interdependent. This “theory of equilibrium” had to be complemented by a “theory of motion.” Thus the “Dynamics” of political economy studied the “progressive changes” in the economy of a society. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, ed. J. M. Robson, vol. 3 of the Collected Works, 705. Mill professed, however, not to believe in Comte’s conception of the “conditions” of order or of progress. Mill to Barbot de Chement, August 7, 1854, The Later Letters,

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Comtean view that the conflicting parties of order and progress shared the truth.186 In Considerations on Representative Government (1861), he again stressed that governments must take into account the necessity of preserving both order and progress.187 He was also taken with Comte’s relativist approach to history. In his famous Autobiography (1873), he gave his adherence to Comte’s idea that their period was an “age of transition in opinions.” Reflecting the impact of Comte’s thought, he declared that this period of “weak convictions, paralysed intellects, and a growing laxity of principle” could not end until beliefs had been renovated, “leading to the evolution of some faith, whether religious or merely human.”188 At the end of his life, Mill admitted that his opinions were “the closest to those of M. Comte” in matters pertaining to religion.189 Indeed, Bernard Semmel, who has written extensively on Mill’s notion of virtue, argued that Mill “sought spiritual perfection above all” and insisted on social obligations.”190 Mill believed that Comte was “justified in the attempt to develope [sic] his philosophy into a religion” in order to create a spiritual consensus.191 Mill embraced the Religion of Humanity as a substitute for Christianity for the rest of his life, though he had reservations about its authoritarian aspects.192 In his diary, Mill stated that “the only good thing” in the Syst`eme de politique positive was “the thoroughness with which he . . . enforced and illustrated the possibility of making le culte de l’humanit´e perform the function and supply the place of a religion.”193 No one before Comte had realized “all the majesty” in the idea of “the general interest of the human

186

187 188 189 190

191 192

193

ed. Mineka and Lindley, vol. 14, 237. See also Mill, System of Logic, 8:917–24. On Mill’s use of social statics and social dynamics, see Bain, John Stuart Mill, 71–3. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in Essays on Politics and Society, ed. J. M. Robson, vol. 18 of The Collected Works, 253–4. In this work, Mill also used the term he had coined during his correspondence with Comte: “pedantocracy.” He condemned the degeneration of the bureaucracy into a “pedantocracy.” Ibid., 308. John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, in Essays on Politics and Society, ed. J. M. Robson, volume 18 of The Collected Works, 384–9. Mill, Autobiography, 4, 247. Mill to Barbot de Chement, August 7, 1854, The Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, vol. 14, 237. Bernard Semmel, “John Stuart Mill’s Coleridgean Neoradicalism,” in Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism, ed. Eldon J. Eisenach (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 50. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 137. Allan D. Megill, “Mill’s Religion of Humanity and On Liberty,” in Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism, ed. Eldon J. Eisenach (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 302; Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 23; Raeder, John Stuart Mill, 1–3; Ryan, J. S. Mill, 230–39. Mill, Diary, January 24, 1854, in Journals and Debating Speeches, ed. John M. Robson, vol. 27 of The Collected Works, 646. On Mill’s concept of religion, see Megill, “Mill’s Religion of Humanity,” 304; Capaldi, Mill, 345.

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race, both as a source of emotion and as a motive to conduct.”194 This cult of humanity, which was represented by “the minds and character of the elite, in the past, present and future,” could appeal to everyone, giving them a sense of unity and a narrative of meaning. It should be the model for all other religions.195 In his Three Essays on Religion, Mill recommended outright the Religion of Humanity as fulfilling the conditions of a religion. He explained, “The essence of religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognized as of the highest excellence, and as rightfully paramount over all selfish objects of desire.” He thus agreed with Comte that religion should not worship a transcendent divine being and should be based on altruism, that is, on people’s friendly feelings toward their fellow beings at all times. Such sentiments could be cultivated by means of a universal system of moral education.196 People should learn to identify with others and overcome their hedonism and their selfish preoccupation with salvation.197 They should make “the happiness and dignity of . . . [the] collective body the central points to which all things are to trend.”198 In referring to Mill’s embrace of the structure of the Religion of Humanity, “constructed on the basis of men’s amiable feelings towards one another,” Bain remarked, “To this he had been led, I have no doubt, in the first instance by Comte, although the filling-up is his own.”199 Ultimately, Mill may have favored the Religion of Humanity because altruism seemed related to his old utilitarian principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”200 In addition, perhaps struck by Comte’s cult of Clotilde de Vaux, Mill constructed a version of it in honor of Harriet Taylor. Mill and Harriet Taylor married in 1851, but seven years later, she died. Like Clotilde de Vaux, she suffered from tuberculosis. Mill worshipped her and attributed many of his ideas to her. As he explained in his Autobiography, “Her memory is to me a religion, and her approbation the 194 195 196

197 198 199

200

Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 135. Mill to Barbot de Chement, August 7, 1854, The Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, vol. 14, 237. John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion, in Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, ed. John M. Robson, vol. 10 of The Collected Works, 422. On promoting feelings of fraternity, see Joseph Hamburger, “Religion and On Liberty,” in A Cultivated Mind: Essays on J. S. Mill Presented to John M. Robson, ed. Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 162. Hamburger, “Religion,” 163, 165; Raeder, John Stuart Mill, 36. Mill, Diary, January 24, 1854, in Journals and Debating Speeches, ed. Robson, vol. 27 of The Collected Works, 646. Bain, John Stuart Mill, 134. On Mill’s incorporation of his thoughts on Comte’s religious philosophy into a review of the first two volumes of George Grote’s History of Greece, see ibid., 85. John Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 59.

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standard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life.”201 Yet Mill’s ambivalence to Comte continued to be a problem throughout his life. In 1865, he wrote to Comte’s English disciple Richard Congreve, “It is precisely because I consider M. Comte to have been a great thinker, that I regard it as a duty to balance the strong & deeply felt admiration which I express for what I deem the fundamental parts of his philosophy by an equally emphatic expression of the opposite feeling I entertain towards other parts.” He always considered Comte and Ruskin to be the most original thinkers of his era but felt compelled to distance himself from the former because of the practical applications of positivist philosophy, which were most evident in the “extravagances of his later writings.”202 Just as Comte tried to conceal the influence that Saint-Simon had had on his development, Mill sought systematically to downplay Comte’s impact on his evolution. In the second edition of A System of Logic of 1846, Mill eliminated approximately sixty references to Comte’s name, although he usually retained the idea Comte had expressed. In the third edition of 1851, he cut out ten more references to Comte, including the passage where he exclaimed that the Cours was “the greatest [book] yet produced on the Philosophy of the Sciences.”203 As previously mentioned, Mill indirectly condemned Comte’s views on women in The Subjection of Women (1869), where he argued that women’s subordinate status hurt progress. But the most significant repudiation occurred in 1865 when Mill was encouraged by John Chapman to write two essays for the Westminster Review, which were reprinted by Nicholas Tr¨ubner as a separate book entitled Auguste Comte and Positivism in 1865.204 Feeling responsible, if not guilty, for 201 202

203

204

Mill, Autobiography, 251. See also A. N. Wilson, God’s Funeral (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 51. Mill to Richard Congreve, August 8, 1865, Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, vol. 16, 1085. See also Mill, Diary, January 21, 1854, in Journals and Debating Speeches, ed. Robson, 645. Mill also did not like the practical doctrines of Ruskin. John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, ed. J. M. Robson, vols. 7 and 8 of The Collected Works, 8:1118. See also 7: xc–xci. Mill had the idea of writing this essay on Comte as early as 1854 because John Chapman wanted an article on the French philosopher for the Westminster Review after having recently published Harriet Martineau’s translation of the Cours. But Mill abandoned the project after Harriet Taylor expressed her fear that he would have to praise Harriet Martineau, whom she disliked as a horrid gossip. He wrote the articles after Taylor died and Emile Littr´e published his biography of Comte in 1863: “The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte,” Westminster Review 83 (April 1865), 339–405 and “Later Speculations of Auguste Comte,” ibid., 84 ( July 1865), 1–42. See also Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill, 370; Capaldi, Mill, 235, 321; Wright, The Religion of Humanity, 46–7; John Stuart Mill to Harriet Mill, January 16, 1854, The Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 14:134. Caroline Comte was relieved that Mill’s book was at least a “discussion” and did not

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having to a large extent made Comte’s reputation, at least in England, he believed it was time to evaluate his ideas more critically. He tended to praise the Cours and called Comte as great a scientific thinker as Descartes and Leibniz. However, he criticized Comte’s opposition to interior observation, formal conditions of proof, and causal natural laws. He went so far as to deny that Comte created the science of society. Except his analysis of history, to which there is much to be added, but which we do not think likely to be ever, in its general features, superseded, he has done nothing in Sociology which does not require to be done over again, and better. . . . [H]is renown with posterity would probably have been greater than it is now likely to be, if after showing the way in which the social science should be formed, he had not flattered himself that he had formed it.205

In his illuminating book Comte after Positivism, Robert Scharff points out that the real problem was that Comte was not the same kind of positivist that Mill was. Unlike Comte, who viewed interior observation, formal proofs, and causal laws as prescientific holdovers that had to be transcended before positivism could be fully established, Mill maintained that the development of positivism was complete and that positivist philosophers now should lay down the conceptual and methodological requirements for science. He and other positivists after Comte refashioned positivism, making it an ahistorical philosophy with a formal epistemic system inspired by the sciences and a mission to produce permanent rules for directing scientific practices. Scharff argues persuasively that this version of positivism, which eventually triumphed, would not have met with Comte’s approval.206 Mill’s book also reveals his dislike of Comte’s personality and some of his views on religion and politics. Reflecting his own frustrations during the years they corresponded, Mill wrote that one impediment to the development of Comte’s thought was that his self-confidence, or “self-conceit,” was “colossal,” if not “outrageous.” Much of what Comte wrote in the years after their rupture, especially the Syst`eme, was, in Mill’s mind, patently absurd, for Comte’s plans for the future positivist regime, his utopia, were marred by a “frenzy for regulation,” excessive systematization, and “strange conceits.”207 He was particularly incensed that Comte rejected liberty of conscience, the basis of liberalism, and aimed to organize a priestly elite that would

205 206 207

declare “war” on Comte’s ideas. Madame Comte to no name, June 20, 1866, in Archives Bertrand, Carton F, Archives, Acad´emie des Sciences. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 123–4. Scharff, Comte After Positivism, x, 36–72, 120–22. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 130, 196.

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prove to be despotic.208 Thus although supportive of Comte’s stress on the leadership of a new kind of clerisy to mold opinions, Mill condemned his plan for an organized spiritual power because it did not rise naturally and permitted no liberty or “spontaneity on the part of individuals.” Moreover, thinkers should be allowed to sit in deliberative bodies and participate as advisors in the government. Mill, in short, disliked the way Comte strictly differentiated between the temporal and spiritual powers, and he rejected his insistence on institutionalizing the Religion of Humanity and providing it with all sorts of rituals.209 Social consensus and common doctrines were desirable but should not come about through coercion, as Comte believed, but through education and rational argument.210 Altruism should not mean abandoning one’s own interest for the collective good but promoting universal autonomy. Embracing everyone’s selfinterest was the best way to show one’s concern for others, which was of crucial importance.211 Mill, unlike Comte, did not believe that all individuals could be permanently mobilized for the general welfare.212 To Mill, social development depended to some extent on the individual’s self-development, and both required a critical spirit and practice.213 Mill’s defense of individualism grew stronger after his encounter with Comte and is evident in the book that gave him most pride, On Liberty. It was written in collaboration with Harriet Taylor and published in 1859.214 Even here, one notices Comte’s ideas on relativism, history, and the importance of opinions. Yet, Mill’s emphatic stress on individualism and diversity was at least in part a reaction to the dangerous homogeneity of the positivist system. He had told his wife in 1855 that he was concerned that Comte and other social reformers were promoting “liberticide.”215 Besides warning against the peril of the tyranny of the majority in a democracy, Mill wished to prove his opposition to Comte’s “despotism of society over the individual.”216 To Comte, society was more “real” than the individual, whose desires 208 209

210 212 213 214 215 216

Semmel, “John Stuart Mill’s Coleridgean Neoradicalism,” 63. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 123. See also Mill to C´elestin de Bligni`eres, January 22, 1862, Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 15:768–9; Mill to Emile Littr´e , May 11, 1865, Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 16:1046; Robson, The Improvement of Mankind, 138; Capaldi, Mill, 170; Raeder, John Stuart Mill, 78, 252. Cowling, Mill and Liberalism, 23. 211 Capaldi, Mill, 199, 211, 254. Fred Wilson, “Mill on Psychology and the Moral Sciences,” The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 234. Gertrud Lenzer, introduction to Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings, ed. Lenzer (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), xxix–xxx. Mill, Autobiography, 257. Mill to Harriet Taylor, January 15, 1855, The Later Letters, ed. Mineka and Lindley, 14:294. Mill, On Liberty, 227.

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and freedoms had to be subordinated to the needs of the whole. Moreover, Comte tended to dwell on the notion that because there was no freedom of speech in the sciences, it should not exist in social and moral matters.217 But Mill believed society should aim at the development of each individual, for individual progress encouraged social development.218 He praised liberty of thought and expression as crucial for the self-development of each person and the progress of society.219 Each individual had the right to pursue happiness in his or her own manner.220 As Nicholas Capaldi has pointed out, Mill opposed “intellectual dictatorship” and “social technocracy” because he believed “personal autonomy and individual self-government were vital to a free society.” Yet as Gertrude Himmelfarb also remarked, Mill did seem “almost pathetic” in trying to “superimpose the principles of On Liberty,” that is, the importance of each individual’s freedom of thought and action, “upon the Comtean vision of an organic society so firmly based upon reason, morality, and a ‘general unanimity of sentiment’ as to preclude any further change.” On Liberty “represented, in short, not merely a rejection of all that, from Mill’s point of view, was the worst in Comte; it represented a rejection of all that Mill elsewhere took to be the best in Comte – community, fraternity, and morality.”221 After all, as Linda Raeder pointed out, he seemed elsewhere enthusiastic about Comte’s collectivist idea that all individuals are “public functionaries employed by society.”222 But in this book, Mill’s defense of individual liberty was so extreme that he was accused of contradicting his own elitism, suppressing the relations between the individual and society, and developing a negative definition of freedom, whereby the government can hardly ever intervene in the affairs of the members of society.223 In fact, his view of the social whole – the social whole that Comte put before the individual – remained vague.224 Nevertheless, in a famous passage, Mill explained Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when 217 218 220 221 222 223 224

Alan Ryan, “In a Liberal Landscape,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 535. Mueller, John Stuart Mill, 128. 219 Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill, 400. Semmel, “John Stuart Mill’s Coleridgean Neoradicalism,” 74. Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 53, 91. Raeder, John Stuart Mill, 334. On this problem, see F. W. Garforth, Educative Democracy: John Stuart Mill on Education in Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 70–72. J. C. Rees, Mill and His Early Critics (Leicester: University College, 1956), 9–16, 36.

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and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.225

Yet, ironically, Mill himself could not tolerate unconventional men such as Comte, who often referred to himself as an “eccentric thinker.”226 old frie nds One reason Comte felt particularly bereft after the end of his relationship with Mill was that while it was going well and they were excited about their joint mission of regenerating the West, he had dropped an old friend, Pierre-Jacques Valat. They had been students together at the lyc´ee in Montpellier and the Ecole Polytechnique and had been correspondents since 1815. A mathematics teacher in Bordeaux, Valat eagerly read the first volumes of the Cours, which he called “the most remarkable work of our epoch.”227 But in offering his thoughts on why it had not attracted more attention, Valat inadvertently insulted Comte by suggesting that its focus was too narrow and its style tedious.228 Comte angrily retorted that “the age of discussion” was over for him. He would no longer permit Valat to bring up philosophical matters with him.229 Having in his own mind already established the positive system of indubitable ideas, Comte was no longer interested in debating intellectual matters. Instead, he felt deeply the need for “sincere affections, especially [those] dating from infancy.”230 He reassured Valat that they could remain friends because they understood “each other by means of the heart, in the absence of the mind.”231 Two years before he met Clotilde de Vaux, Comte was already more interested in cultivating other people in terms of what they could offer him emotionally rather than intellectually. Valat unwillingly limited his topics of conversation. Claiming that he was too busy, he did not read the last volume of the Cours and wrote to Comte less often. His letters covered only problems at work and domestic matters, such as the health of his wife and the upbringing 225 226 227 228 229 231

Mill, On Liberty, 269. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 29, 1846, CG, 4:82. Pierre-Jacques Valat to Comte, April 26, 1841, MAC. Valat to Comte, August 25, 1842, MAC. Comte to Valat, September 17, 1842, CG, 1:86. 230 Ibid., 87. Comte to Valat, August 29, 1842, CG, 2:80.

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of his children. Unable to be as open as he was before, he bitterly sensed that Mill had taken his place in Comte’s affections.232 It gradually became clear to both Comte and Valat that their friendship was in danger for other reasons as well. In July 1843, Valat finally admitted that for the past two years, he had returned to religion because of the “emptiness” in his soul.233 He had taken up, however, not the Protestantism of his upbringing but Catholicism. Comte tried to be sympathetic, attributing Valat’s surprising regression to the “mental and moral worries” that plagued their contemporaries. Fearful, however, that his friend’s reversion to religion might further strain their relationship, Comte warned him that the quietude and “mental stability” that he yearned for could be found only in positivism, which fulfilled the functions of the traditional religions without adopting such absurd doctrines as the eternal damnation of virtuous non-Christians.”234 Valat felt insulted. Yet despite being disappointed by the “profound disjunction” that had risen between them, he vowed to remain Comte’s friend.235 Comte sent him a copy of the Discours sur l’esprit positif in March 1844.236 It is not known how Valat responded to its anti-religious diatribe. It is known, however, that in the 1870s, he considered himself one of the “friends” of positivism, but not a convert.237 Comte grew increasingly tired of Valat’s resistance to positivism, his preoccupation with banal problems at work and home, and especially his tardiness in responding to his letters. Perhaps Valat found Comte’s intransigence, egotism, and atheism equally frustrating. In late 1844, he wrote Comte a critical letter, noting that Comte’s doctrine had made little headway in Bordeaux, where people either ignored or misunderstood it. Catholics considered his doctrine too impious and pantheistic, while rationalists disliked his disdain of psychology. The main problem was that Comte forgot that “men” were “frivolous” creatures who preferred to pursue money rather than spend long hours studying the six volumes of the Cours.238 Comte found such comments unkind and discouraging. Unable to put up with his friend’s lack of support, Comte bluntly wrote on the back of Valat’s letter: “Resolved on Sunday March 30 not to respond.”239 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239

Valat to Comte, July 23, 1843, MAC. Excerpt published in CG, 2:394. Valat to Comte, August 25, 1843, MAC. Excerpt also in CG, 2:394. Comte to Valat, August 25, 1843, CG, 2:188–9. Valat to Comte, July 23, 1843, MAC. The book, with Comte’s autograph, was found in a bookstall on the quais of Paris in 1890. See “Un Autographe d’Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d ser., 2 (November 1890): 371. Valat to Robinet, January 2, 1870, MAC. Valat to Comte, October 27, 1844, MAC. See Comte’s statement on the back of the letter from Valat to Comte, October 27, 1844, MAC.

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When Valat later moved to Paris in 1853, he thought about calling on Comte but decided against it for “fear of encountering some differences of ideas incompatible with the confidence that must exist between two true friends.”240 Intellectual divergences coupled with insensitivity on the part of both men thus killed a friendship that was over thirty years old. After Comte died, Valat sadly regretted that he had alienated Comte by having questioned various aspects of positivism, especially because he had not read the entire Cours. He recognized that Comte had interpreted such questions as criticisms emanating from ill-will and short-sightedness. Nevertheless, like Massin, Valat came to realize that it was not pleasant to be associated with an increasingly irascible individual. Comte tried with even less success to exercise control over another old friend from Montpellier, Emile Tabari´e. In late 1826, Tabari´e had lent five hundred francs to Massin to help defray the cost of Comte’s stay in an insane asylum. But because perhaps he made disparaging observations about his marriage to Massin, Comte soon afterward stopped writing to him. Tabari´e had been very bitter about this rupture, which he denied having provoked. Experiencing financial problems, he finally decided to ask Comte in late 1843 to repay the money he owed to him.241 The request could not have come at a worse time, for Comte was worried about losing his post as admissions examiner. Another man had also recently demanded repayment of 250 francs that he had lent to Comte in January 1825.242 Comte had completely forgotten about this debt. While making arrangements to placate Tabari´e, whose money was finally reimbursed in December 1844, Comte proceeded to insult him. After Tabari´e claimed to have always expressed his appreciation for him, Comte retorted that it was only “intellectual.” Comte insisted that he deserved “moral appreciation,” which was “no less important” in his eyes than “intellectual appreciation.”243 Again reflecting his interest in feelings, Comte seemed upset that Tabari´e did not seem to have any true affection for him; he respected Comte’s brain, instead of loving his character or heart. Convinced that Tabari´e, like Valat, was intent on tormenting him, Comte then accused him 240 241

242

243

“Pr´eface,” September 1869, page 5, in letter of Valat to Laffitte, May 2, no year, MAC. Tabari´e to Comte, December 8, 1843, MAC. So as not to discredit Comte, Pierre Laffitte chose not to include the later letters from Tabari´e in an article containing the correspondence between these two men. See RO, 2d ser., 11 ( July 1895): 86– 139. Letter from “Illisible” (Charles Magloire B´enard) to Comte, July 16, 1843, MAC. Comte repaid him 130 francs on July 19, 1843. He had repaid him some of the money by giving lessons to his son in early 1826. Comte to Tabari´e, December 14, 1843, CG, 2:220–21.

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of being cold, unimaginative, stiff, and touchy.244 Tabari´e was profoundly offended by Comte’s gratuitous remarks: “It is very sad, in effect, to see a man of your merit stoop to use the most insulting language possible to hurt someone who does not hurt you, to humiliate someone who honors you, and to affront someone who did you a favor. . . . We do not have, I see, the same ideas in fact of friendship and of gratitude.”245 It is ironic that Comte yearned to inspire affection but seemed capable only of alienating his friends. the sorrows of caroline massin Another person whom Comte estranged was Caroline Massin. She left him on August 5, 1842, after years of feeling neglected by a man obsessed with his work for humanity. She moved far away to a peaceful area in the ninth arrondissement called “Batignolles.”246 Out of his annual salary, which was at that time around 10,000 francs, Comte arranged to give her 3,000 francs a year through an intermediary, Lenoir. Lenoir had worked in the Ministry of the Interior and directed the Ath´en´ee, where Comte had given lectures in the early 1830s. Though Lenoir was an older man in his mid-sixties, he and Comte had become good friends, especially because Massin had often encouraged her husband to invite him to their house. Lenoir and Comte also dined once a month at the home of the scientist Henri Ducrotay de Blainville.247 Massin strongly objected to the fact that her husband not only refused ever to see her again but insisted on giving her an allowance in an impersonal fashion through an intermediary. “Never to have from you any other sign of life besides the money that I will receive 244 245 246 247

Comte said he perceived in Tabari´e “une s´echeresse vulgaire, une susceptibilit´e plate et gourm´ee, et un esprit de taquinerie sophistiqu´e.” Comte to Tabari´e, February 2, 1844, CG, 2:236. Tabari´e to Comte, February 20, 1844, MAC. Also in CG, 2:413. Massin lived at 37, rue Rochechouart. Massin to Comte, October 25, 1842, MAC. Lenoir may have been a former SaintSimonian. In a Saint-Simonian calendar, there is a note alluding to the celebrating of the first Saint-Simonian marriage on October 31, 1831. Lenoir is mentioned. See Calendrier S.S. (Paris: Carpentier-M´ericourt, 1833). This books has no pages. Both Comte and Lenoir were founding members of the Soci´et´e Phr´enologique de Paris in the early 1830s. See Soci´et´e Phr´enologique de Paris: Prospectus (Paris, 1831). This prospectus is in Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. The Ath´en´ee ceased operations in the summer of 1847. Lenoir died in 1856. On Lenoir and the Ath´en´ee, see “Documents pour servir a` l’histoire de l’Ath´en´ee,” RO, 2d ser., 9 (September 1894):18; Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886):204; Deroisin, Comte, 6. The monthly dinners at Blainville’s house included Lenoir, Bonnin, Thal`es Bernard, and Comte. “Notes de Pierre Laffitte sur les Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” April 25, 1886, Archives of Sybil de Acevedo.

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is a thing to which I will never consent.”248 This system seemed designed to accentuate his scorn for her, and she found it unbearable. She never wanted a total separation and would certainly never consent to divorce even if it were allowed. (Divorce was made illegal in 1816.) Although she preferred to live apart from him rather than with him, she had hoped to see him at least once a month. She wrote him letter after letter, begging him to meet with her and not cause a complete rupture. Remember what I have been for you. Think about what I would still be if you needed me, and do not thoughtlessly take in my regard the position that you have taken with your family. Do not completely break the last tie that is not yet broken because that would have [serious] consequences.249

Being financially dependent on Comte hurt Massin’s pride. She knew she could earn a living with her “needle,” but her rheumatism ruled out this option. At one point, she almost took a position in a wealthy, powerful family; she would be the mentor of a young girl whose mother had died, and she would direct her education. Knowing she inspired “confidence,” Massin boasted that she could find “honorable means” to procure the “comfortable life” to which she had grown accustomed.”250 But she felt she could not accept a position without causing something of a scandal, cutting all ties to Comte, and giving up her hope of a reconciliation. To her, Comte would always be her husband. Massin’s situation reflected the predicament of the nineteenthcentury French bourgeois woman who was forced to live alone but had no real job opportunities to enable her to support herself. She knew that if she wanted the benefits of full employment, she would first have to go to trial and seek legal independence from her husband. The whole process, which would make their rupture public, seemed draining, humiliating, and “antipathetic.” Wars between married men and women were “odious.” Moreover, she risked losing her status as a bourgeois wife, who was supposed to be obedient and dependent. In the end, she submitted to the Napoleonic Code’s subordination of women but hated the way Comte “abused” his superiority and acted with “violence.”251 When an uncle died in 1846 and she wished to contest his will, which left nothing to her, she had to beg Comte to 248 249 250 251

Massin to Comte, October 1, 1842, MAC. Massin to Comte, August 26, 1842, MAC. Massin to Comte, October 28, 1842, MAC. See also Massin to Comte, October 24, 1842, MAC. Massin to Comte, October 28, 1842, January 17, 1843, January 21, 1843, MAC.

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act in her behalf because she had no legal standing in French law.252 By law, she even had to seek an authorization from him whenever she switched apartments.253 What was most galling to her was that without any resources, she was obliged to accept Comte’s unfriendly financial arrangement. She was very bitter, for she was fully aware that his economic and legal privileges gave him “so many advantages” over her and left her with little or no leverage.254 When in late 1842 he accused her of harassing him, she reproached him for his “dryness” and “harshness” and pointed out: “The weakest . . . does not menace the strongest, and you are incontestably the strongest because I depend on you in all respects.”255 Resisting the hierarchical character that Comte wished to give to their relationship, she realized that during their marriage, her “great crime” had been to consider him “a husband and not a master.” He had always tried to capitalize on his intellectual superiority, but she had always found this strategy “absurd” because she did not feel that she was competing with him: “We did not have the same things to do.”256 Now it was difficult for her to grant that he was “the master” of the situation simply because of his economic power.257 She recognized that while he could take the “initiative” in arranging his life, especially in matters relating to their economic well-being, all she could do was “to submit” to the ramifications of his actions. Unable to make plans for the future, she wrote, “To predict when one can do nothing is a sad lot; for twenty years that has been my fate.”258 Her letters to Comte testify to her deep fondness for him. Besides warning him to pay attention to his physical and mental health, she gave him good advice on how to improve his relations with his family and how to avoid further antagonizing his colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique. Although bossy, she had a better sense of politics and more tact than Comte did. When he prepared in 1843 to give the opening lecture of his astronomy course, which had incurred the wrath of the Catholic press the year before, she joked that “the good Lord” was “very fashionable” at the moment and told him to be bold but prudent: “I would like to see you raise yourself this year to a greater height, [to be] calm, dignified, and especially serious and 252

253 254 255 256 257 258

Massin to Comte, February 27, 1846, MAC. She discovered that because she was illegitimate, she had no right to substitute for her mother in matters of inheritance. See Massin to Comte, February 28, 1846, MAC. Massin to Comte, March 30, 1844, MAC. She moved from 37, rue Rochechouart to 40, rue de la Tour d’Auvergne, in what is now the ninth arrondissement. Massin to Comte, October 28, 1842, MAC. Massin to Comte, October 25, 1842, MAC. Massin to Comte, May 28, 1843, MAC. Massin to Comte, January 17, 1843, MAC. Massin to Comte, January 1845, no day mentioned, MAC.

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severe, like a man who knows the danger but who does not stop and fulfills his duty as he understands it. In short, I am counting on you.”259 She forced herself to go to his course alone, for she did not have time to find a chaperon, something that “cost her a lot.” After hearing his “beautiful” opening lecture, she voiced her approval: “You were no longer there the man of the preface with whom I will never be reconciled.”260 Comte was at first happy to be rid of his domineering wife, who he believed made his life difficult, disturbed his work, and did not appreciate him. He adamantly refused to give into her demands to see him, for he was convinced that she was scheming to get back together with him and was determined to destroy him in one way or another. His paranoia is evident in the fact that he constantly misinterpreted her letters, seeing “absolutely the contrary” of what she wrote in order to reinforce his view that she was trying to hurt him.261 However, even he had difficulties adjusting to their separation. The year before, in July 1841, he and Massin had moved into a large new apartment at 10, rue Monsieur le Prince in the sixth arrondissement. They had spent hundreds of francs for furniture, rugs, and drapes, which seemed to express their more settled, bourgeois life.262 Now the apartment seemed absurd. A year after their separation, Comte complained that the “perfect domestic quietude” that he had long desired was sadly tomb-like.263 His life was suddenly empty. One reason his situation was depressing was that he had finished his Cours and was about to start a new work on positive politics – a work that would be “more moral than mental.” He explained that at this point, the “needs” of his “heart, which had always been so energetic . . . due to their never having been suitably satisfied, soon had to acquire an irresistible preponderance.”264 The “aesthetic revolution” that he had fabricated in 1838 to cultivate his feelings did not seem adequate for the new emotional development required for his new work. Comte was already searching to fill the void left by Massin’s departure. Until he found this replacement, his relationship with Massin did not end. On August 25, 1842, he sent her the last volume of his Cours.265 Although he had acceded to her wish to write to her once 259 260 261 262 263 264 265

Massin to Comte, December 8, 1842, MAC. Massin to Comte, January 23, 1843, MAC. Massin to Comte, January 21, 1843, MAC. See also Massin to Comte, November 18, 1843, MAC. Entries from July 1841 to January 1842, Comte’s notebook of “Recettes et d´epenses,” MAC. Comte to Valat, July 17, 1843, CG, 2:181. Comte to Clotilde de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:82. See Comte’s list of people to whom he sent the Cours, MAC.

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a month, he found himself writing more often. From September to December 1842, he wrote her eighteen letters; in 1843, twenty-eight; and in 1844, twenty-four. Yet when he met Clotilde de Vaux in 1845, he wrote Massin only four times that year.266 It is evident that with few friends, Comte felt a great need to keep his wife informed about his troubles and triumphs. He knew she was concerned about him. As she pointed out to him, he found “the sentiment of affection” that she had for him “very convenient.”267 And sometimes, he even delighted her by returning the feeling. For example, on April 20, 1843, she thanked him for a recent letter, saying, “For many years, I had not received from you such an expression of confidence and affection and nothing which makes me remember as much that all our moments together have not been unhappy.”268 He also sought reassurance from Lenoir that she was not terribly ill.269 Although he was adamant about not seeing her, he occasionally begged her to maintain her correspondence with him. But at other times, he shocked her by angrily objecting to what she wrote. Once she retorted, “I hurt you without even knowing how I did it.”270 She had difficulties maintaining ties with someone who was so unpredictable, and once de Vaux appeared, Comte did effect the complete rupture she feared. sarah austin Comte liked the company of women. When his wife left, he went out more often, hoping to find a woman “to occupy” his heart.”271 About six months after their separation, he even incensed Massin by escorting a young, blond woman to the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien.272 But the woman who became most important to him before he met Clotilde de Vaux was Sarah Austin, who was introduced to him by Mill. Born in 1793, Sarah Austin was the daughter of John Taylor, a prominent businessman in Norwich, and the cousin of Harriet Martineau, the future translator of Comte’s Cours. As a very beautiful, 266

267 268 269 270 271 272

Emile Littr´e, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, 2d ed. (Paris, 1864), 508. The first edition of this work was published in 1863. Many of the letters between Massin and Comte were lost or destroyed. For example, Comte wrote Massin twenty-six letters in 1850. Only seven are in CG. Massin to Comte, January 17, 1843, MAC. Massin to Comte, April 20, 1843, MAC. The letter to which she was referring has not been found. Lenoir to Comte, October 14, 1843, MAC. Massin to Comte, June 21, 1843, MAC. Comte to Clotilde de Vaux, February 25, 1846, CG, 3:353. Massin to Comte, February 26, and March 23, 1843, MAC.

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intelligent, and charming young woman, she shocked her family when she decided to marry the austere, if not gloomy, lawyer John Austin. Nevertheless, thanks to John’s brilliance in legal theory and Sarah’s vivaciousness, the ill-matched couple became friends with Thomas Carlyle, Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, William Molesworth, and George Grote. In fact, at one point, Sarah ran a salon chiefly for the Benthamites because her husband was a staunch believer in the principle of utility. The Austins were particularly friendly with the Mills, who were their neighbors. John Austin helped John Stuart Mill with his law studies in 1821 and 1822. Sarah taught him German. Indeed, she was so close to the young man that she considered him a son.273 Beginning in the 1820s, the Austins experienced one hardship after another. John proved to be a failure first as a lawyer and then as a law professor, and he found the little government work that he did unsatisfactory. Suffering from a nervous disposition and lack of self-confidence, he eventually became incapable of any type of work whatsoever and fell prey to various physical ailments, obvious symptoms of his discontent with himself. Sarah hoped that he would be at least able to write down his ideas, but even in this area he was singularly unproductive. It was only because she edited and published his manuscripts after his death that he became famous in jurisprudence. As the years passed, John Austin became increasingly despondent and reclusive. He rarely left his rooms except to dine occasionally with his wife and their daughter, Lucie. With her husband sick and cut off from the world, Sarah Austin was forced to take over practical matters. Above all, she had to find a way to support the family. Having learned German, French, Italian, and Latin as a young girl and having lived for six months in Bonn with her husband, she turned to translation, for which she proved particularly gifted. Her translations included Voltaire’s History of Charles XII and Leopold von Ranke’s The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes of Rome during the Sixteenth and Seventeeth Centuries and History of the Reformation in Germany. Together with her articles for literary and political journals, her translating work earned her money to live on and also considerable fame. She was responsible for stimulating much interest in German literature. Unable to afford life in London, the Austins lived much of the time abroad. In 1843, they moved from Dresden to Paris, where John 273

Sarah Austin to Comte, March 3, 1844, in Pierre Laffitte, “Connaissances, amis, protecteurs d’Auguste Comte. Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Mme Austin: La Question feminine par A. Comte,” RO, 2d ser., 17 (November 1898), 439; Adburgham, A Radical Aristocrat, 177–8.

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was elected a corresponding member of the Moral and Political Class of the Institut, perhaps due to his wife’s old friendship with Victor Cousin. (Ten years earlier, she had translated Victor Cousin’s Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia.) In Paris, Sarah Austin created a well-known salon, frequented by prominent foreigners passing through Paris and by many French academics, politicians, and literary people. Among her guests were Alfred de Vigny, Ary Scheffer, Alexis de Tocqueville, Augustin Thierry, Charles Dunoyer, Michel Chevalier, Barth´elemy St. Hilaire, and Franc¸ois Guizot. The latter became one of her closest friends.274 Comte had the opportunity of meeting Sarah and her husband in late 1843. Mill informed him that one of his most “precious” and intelligent friends, John Austin, was coming to Paris and had expressed a “strong desire” to meet the author of the Cours, which had much impressed him.275 Attempting to make jurisprudence an empirical science, Austin was evidently intrigued by Comte’s effort to create a science of society.276 Mill seemed, however, a bit hesitant about the match because he warned Comte that Austin was as reclusive as he was and had different political opinions. Perhaps to spark Comte’s curiosity, Mill mentioned that Sarah Austin was more well-known and more sociable than her husband. Flattered by this request and eager to prove he was not as misanthropic as Mill assumed, Comte overcame his “repugnance” for making new friends and was pleased to find the Austins to be an interesting couple.277 He saw them often throughout 1844, usually privately at their apartment, at the Grotes’ residence, or at their salon. He considered his relations with them “precious” in the middle of his “isolation” and loneliness.278 He sent them the Discours sur l’esprit positif and made an exception to his rule of cerebral hygiene in order to read the only important book Austin published in his lifetime, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832).279 The Austins seemed equally pleased to make his acquaintance. John Austin told Mill that he was surprised to find Comte to be “a man of generous and 274

275 277 278 279

Alexis de Tocqueville gave Sarah Austin tickets to a session of the Chamber of Deputies. See Sarah Austin to Comte, March 6, 1844, “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin,” RO, 2d ser., 18 ( January 1899), 136. Information on the Austins may be found in Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives: John and Sarah Austin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), ix–x, 3–34, 57–95, 120, 131–7; W. L. Morison, John Austin (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), 8–12, 14, 17, 20, 23, 28, 32; Ross, Three Generations, 1:iii–vii. Mill to Comte, October 21, 1843, CG, 2:400. 276 Morison, John Austin, 1. Comte to Mill, October 22, 1843, CG, 2:204. Comte to Mill, December 23, 1843, CG, 2:225. Comte to John Austin, July 20, 1844, CG, 2:261.

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affectionate temper.”280 He and his wife eagerly accepted his invitation to attend the Sunday lectures of his astronomy course.281 John Austin served as an intermediary between Comte and William Whewell. The latter was a philosopher of science, who, like Comte, was intent on classifying the sciences and understanding their history. Comte had heard of him when David Brewster discussed him in 1838 in an article on the Cours in the Edinburgh Review. Brewster criticized Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences as vague, misinformed, and inferior to the Cours.282 Through Austin, Whewell sent Comte Answer to a Critique of the History of the Inductive Sciences (1837). This work was Whewell’s reply to another scholar who had criticized his History of the Inductive Sciences. Comte discussed the work with Mill and had him give Whewell a copy of his Discours sur l’esprit positif. According to Comte, Whewell was important for attracting thinkers to the problem of the relationship between the objective and subjective components of knowledge. Although supportive of induction, that is, data coming from the outside world, Whewell was a Kantian who believed that the individual mind helped formulate human knowledge by contributing “Fundamental Ideas,” such as space, time, and cause. Whewell argued that these Ideas, which were not founded on experience, were the bases of the physical sciences. When people discovered these Ideas through intuition and spread them, the sciences advanced. Comte believed Whewell had “obscured and exaggerated, or rather misunderstood the Fundamental Idea.”283 Comte preferred the approach of Whewell’s critic, who did not share this faith in a priori truth. Mill informed Comte that the critic was none other than John Herschel. Both Mill and Herschel argued with Whewell about the characteristics of inductive reasoning. Mill found Whewell’s brochure “very weak” – an opinion that is not surprising, given that Whewell opposed empiricism and utilitarianism and sought to use science to defend Christianity.284 280 281

282

283 284

John Austin to John Stuart Mill, n.d., excerpt in Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 654n5. Apparently Comte also met in 1844 John Austin’s younger brother, Charles. See Madame Austin to Comte, September 18, 1844, in Pierre Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (March 1900):278. [David Brewster,] Review of Cours de philosophie positive, by Auguste Comte, in Edinburgh Review 67 ( July 1838): 271–308; Comte to Mill, October 21, 1844, CG, 2:29. For more on Brewster’s article, see Pickering, Comte, volume 1, 494. One person who read Brewster’s review with care was Charles Darwin, who became interested in Comte’s law of three stages, which may have helped give him the courage to break with traditional religion. See Daniel Becquemont, “Auguste Comte et l’Angleterre,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Petit, 169. Comte to Mill, August 15, 1844, CG, 2:274. Mill to Comte, October 5, 1844, CG, 2:425. On Whewell, see Perry Williams, “Passing on the Torch: Whewell’s Philosophy and the Principles of English University Education,”

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Although Comte and John Austin shared many interests, such as the construction of new sciences, it is clear that Sarah Austin most intrigued him. Yet at first Comte did not share Mill’s opinion that she merited her “reputation as a superior woman.”285 He preferred her nice feelings to her ideas, which seemed to smack of her “blue tendency,” a reference to the fact that she was generally considered to be a bluestocking.286 According to the historian Bonnie Smith, the term “bluestocking” usually referred in the nineteenth century to any “pedantic, ugly, mannish, and overly educated woman.”287 According to Comte, bluestockings had “no sex.”288 Comte’s attitude annoyed Mill, who was still smarting from their six-month discussion about the value of women. Although there were tensions in his relationship with Sarah Austin, especially because she did not approve of his relationship with Harriet Taylor, Mill wanted to use her example to prove to Comte that women were indeed equal to men.289 He thus retorted that Sarah Austin was “not only very nice, but truly superior.” Although he would later mock her intellect in an early draft of his Autobiography, he told Comte that her eminence derived from “the good sense” of her “ideas,” which she expressed clearly and elegantly in her writing and conversation.290 Mill brushed off the suggestion that she was a bluestocking. The reproach was meaningless, for any woman involved in literature could be accused of being a bluestocking. Mill’s use of Sarah Austin to defend the ideals of female emancipation is ironic, for her own opposition to the women’s movement contributed to the sudden end of their friendship in 1848.291 Mill’s ruse succeeded. After getting to know her better, Comte admitted that he had judged her too severely and that she was not a bluestocking at all. Although “very distinguished”292 and interesting, she was not at all pedantic in her “nature” or “habits.” What he

285 286 287 288 289

290 291 292

William Whewell: A Composite Portrait, ed. Menachem Fisch and Simon Schaffer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 122–3, 132–7. Mill to Comte, October 21, 1843, CG, 2:400. Comte to Mill, December 23, 1843, CG, 2:225. See also Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives, 120. Bonnie Smith, Changing Lives: Women in European History since 1700 (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1989), 80. Comte to Audiffrent, March 9, 1851, CG, 6:33. Tensions were evident in Mill’s statement to Comte that he knew women who were “infinitely” superior to her and that she was vain. See Mill to Comte, January 17, 1844, CG, 2:412. Other hesitations about her qualities are evident in Mill to Comte, October 17, 1843, CG, 2:400. Mill to Comte, January 17, 1844, CG, 2:412. On Austin, see also the early draft of Mill’s Autobiography in Autobiography and Literary Essays, 186. Morison, John Austin, 24–5; Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives, 165–6. Comte to Mill, December 23, 1843, CG, 2:225.

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most appreciated was her “good-heartedness” [“bonhomie”], which he found rare in women.293 The vivacious Sarah Austin had clearly won Comte over. The impression that she made may be gleaned from a description of her by Barth´elemy St. Hilaire, who was introduced to her in 1840 by Victor Cousin: She was still extremely handsome, and her complexion, which she preserved till the day of her death, was dazzling. Her vigour was extraordinary, and she was calm, although full of life and gaiety. Her conversation was delightful, intelligent and abounding in solid good sense.294

After a few months, Comte felt almost as much at ease around her as he did with his old friends and only wished that he could see her more often. As with Mill, he overlooked the “differences of opinions,” which she brought up, and he seemed to find in her words only signs of her approval.295 He gradually grew fond of her, particularly as he felt a deep need for female companionship. Pierre Laffitte later wrote: “The sympathy of Comte for Mrs. Austin coincided, according to the avowal that he made to me . . . , with a special affective disposition which he found he could put into practice only in his liaison with Madame de Vaux.”296 With her literary interests, Sarah Austin was a predecessor to de Vaux, who was a budding novelist. As de Vaux would do shortly, Sarah Austin appeared to combine the highest qualities of the mind and heart, which Comte found “equally indispensable” but which he lamented were “almost always in opposition” in their contemporary world. He particularly admired the way Austin maintained a balance between ideas and feelings because on the one hand, as a literary figure, she could easily become too intellectual and on the other hand, as a woman, she could fall into the trap of excess sentimentality. Reflecting his affection for her, he wrote in March 1844: “Although my life is very solitary, I previously have had several occasions to know women truly distinguished by their intellectual significance, but you are up to now the only one, Madame, who has given me the happiness of seeing moral tenderness joined with mental elevation.”297 It is clear that Comte, like Guizot, Charles Buller, and John Sterling, liked Sarah Austin because she was a beautiful intellectual woman who was warm-hearted and noncompetitive. Though her professional achievements were remarkable, her job as a translator of male 293 294 295 296 297

Comte to Mill, February 6, 1844, CG, 2:239. Barth´elemy St. Hilaire, quoted in Ross, Three Generations, v–vi. Sarah Austin to Comte, March 3, 1844, in Laffitte, “Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Mme Austin,” 438. Laffitte, “Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Mme Austin,” 439. Comte to Mme Austin, March 4, 1844, CG, 2:243.

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writers’ works did not threaten men. She usually stressed the conventional image of woman as primarily a creature of feeling rather than a victim of feeling. In many ways, she seemed to be the opposite of George Sand, the hated epitome of the emancipated woman.298 Mill gave Austin a rather backhanded compliment when he heard that Comte liked her. “Comte’s taking to you is what I should have expected. I do not find that his profession of avoiding society stands good at all towards those who seek, or whom he thinks likely to value, him. He is at war with most of his contemporaries.”299 Unlike their contemporaries, Sarah Austin was fond of Comte, whose attention was undoubtedly flattering to her. She liked his stimulating conversation and respected the way he stood up for his ideas. Because of her friendship with Mill, the Grotes, and William Molesworth, she was aware of how much his boldness, or imprudence, was costing him at the Ecole Polytechnique. His plight spurred her to prevail upon her husband to call on their friend Guizot, now the prime minister, to help Comte keep his post.300 Most of all, she considered Comte a trusted confidant, who offered her relief from her sick husband.301 Her disenchantment with John Austin had been evident at least since the early 1830s, when she had a platonic affair with Prince P¨uckler Muskau, whose popular Tour in England, Ireland and France she was translating.302 In 1844 she frequently complained to Comte about her husband, who was experiencing yet another financial reversal and demanded more of her care for his ailments. He seemed a poor contrast with Comte, whom she congratulated for using his mind to overcome whatever physical troubles disturbed him.303 She did not know if she had the courage to support John any longer.304 By 1846, Austin was signing her letters to Comte “very affectionately,” but there were limits to how close she could get to the philosopher.305 Despite the fact that she was far from being an advocate of 298 299 300

301 302 303 304

305

Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives, 150; Comte to Mme Austin, March 4, 1844, CG, 2:243. Mill to Sarah Austin, February 26, 1844, Earlier Letters, ed. Mineka, 622. Guizot’s reaction to this request is not known. Comte had been very critical of him in his preface to the sixth volume of the Cours, accusing him of nepotism. See Pickering, Comte, 1:549. See for example Madame Austin to Comte, June 4, 1844, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d. ser., 18 ( January 1899):438. Morison, John Austin, 23. Madame Austin to Comte, September 18, 1844, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 20 (March 1900):278. Madame Austin to Comte, March 11, 1844, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 18 ( January 1899):438. The date is not mentioned in the RO but is marked on the original letter in the MAC. Madame Austin to Comte, February 2, 1846, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (May 1900):419.

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women’s rights as Mill was, Comte’s misogynous tendencies bothered her. She was familiar with the feminist ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose husband, William Godwin, had been a friend of her father’s.306 In truth, she seemed uneasy about her own position on women.307 Although she frequently mocked the femme libre and the movement for the “stupid emancipation of women,” she, nevertheless, demanded her own freedom and voiced her respect for intelligent, forceful women.308 At one point in the early months of their relationship, she wrote to Comte, “I see, Monsieur, you do not have a very high opinion of women.”309 She complained that he had very little respect for their intellect and thus did not take her as seriously as he did her husband.310 She was not as free from the ideas of Wollstonecraft as she may have pretended, for like her, she asserted that a wife should be her husband’s companion even in intellectual matters instead of a completely passive, dependent creature.311 But again she was careful not to be too belligerent in order not to threaten Comte: “Thus do not think that it is as an emancipated woman that I am taking the liberty of talking to you, admiring you, and even differing from you, Monsieur. I have not the least pretention of the sort.”312 She had no doubt that, compared with men, women were more dominated by their emotions, which rendered them “incapable of abstract meditation” and made them “more or less victims” in whatever they did.313 Yet she complained later that Comte was wrong in believing that “one is . . . a fool because one’s opinions are greatly influenced by one’s affections. The opinions of men are often influenced by worse things.”314 In the end, Sarah Austin did not like Comte’s patronizing attitude toward her. After hearing his praises about the way she balanced the mind and heart, she pointed out that in England women were part 306

307 308

309 310

311 312 313 314

Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives, 21–2, 121–2; Mary Poovey, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Female Sexuality,” in Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Carol H. Poston, 2d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 347. For Sarah Austin’s shifting views on women, see Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives, 154–67. Madame Austin to Comte, February 26, 1846, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (May 1900):421. See also Madame Austin to Comte, May 10, 1844, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 18 ( May 1899):441. Sarah Austin to Comte, March 3, 1844, in Laffitte, “Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Mme Austin,” 439. Mrs. Austin to Comte, March 4, 1844, “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin,” RO, 2d ser., 18 ( January 1899), 134. Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives, 21–2. Sarah Austin to Comte, March 3, 1844, in Laffitte, “Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Mme Austin,” 439–40. Madame Austin to Comte, March 11, 1844, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 18 ( May 1899):438. Mrs. Austin to M. Guizot, May 9, 1858, in Ross, Three Generations, 2:57.

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of the intellectual culture and “that this union of qualities that you believed almost incompatible is not rare in my compatriots.” Many Englishwomen, such as the mathematician Mary Somerville, were not only fine intellectuals but devoted wives and mothers and good housekeepers. In her own way, Sarah Austin was challenging the idea of the separation of spheres. After all, her husband’s paralysis and introversion forced her not only to manage the domestic sphere but to act in the public sphere to make ends meet and administer all family matters. Once when Comte asked her to get John Austin to arrange for his Discours sur l’esprit positif to be sent to London, Sarah retorted angrily, “Get the idea firmly in your mind that I am the businessman around here.”315 Comte was “very distressed” after she reproached him for underestimating women.316 Repeating what he had said in the Cours and to Mill, he insisted that moral and intellectual qualities of women were biologically determined and that their social function had to differ from that of men in order for both sexes to be happy. He did not see that the separation of spheres put women at a distinct disadvantage. Nevertheless, Comte became increasingly sensitive to the women’s movement in spite of himself. In a way, John Stuart Mill and Sarah Austin forced him to rethink his position and to come to a new appreciation of the opposite sex. Sarah Austin even introduced him to a fifty-year-old Polish woman, Mademoiselle J. de Haza, who had been a friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. She wrote a brochure about the emancipation of women, and her ideas impressed Comte.317 Considering her “very distinguished,” he even gave her a letter of introduction so that she could meet Mill when she went to London.318 In addition, to prove his respect for intellectual women and their existence in France, he lent Sarah Austin Consid´erations sur l’´etat des sciences et des lettres (1833), a posthumous work by Sophie Germain, the noted French mathematician who tried unsuccessfully to attend 315

316 317

318

Mrs. Austin to Comte, March 4, 1844, “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin,” RO, 2d ser., 18 (January 1899), 135. Comte to Mme Austin, March 4, 1844, CG, 2:242. Comte to Mill, September 2, 1846, CG, 4:34. Austin gave Comte the brochure Haza wrote on the women’s movement. Comte seems to have read it or something else she wrote, for she thanked him for his “amiable opinion . . . on my poor tablets.” J. de Haza to Comte, May 7, 1846. The first wave of Polish feminism occurred in the 1840s. Austin might have become friends with Haza when she wrote The Characteristics of Goethe in 1833. See Bogna Lorence-Kot and Adam Winiarz, “The Polish Women’s Movement to 1914,” in Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennke, eds., Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 208. Comte also added that he found her “eccentric.” Comte to Lewes, April 7, 1847, CG, 4:112. For the letter of introduction, see Comte to Mill, September 2, 1846, CG, 4:34.

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the Ecole Polytechnique after its establishment and came to know Joseph-Louis Lagrange.319 Encouraging Austin to translate it, he was sure it would interest “all your ladies” because it was “one of the most honorable productions” of the female sex and women were “still so little preoccupied by this type of . . . elevated and reasonable philosophy.”320 Such statements reveal Comte’s contemptuous attitude toward the average women. But then, he was not much kinder to men, whom he generally considered mediocre intellectually as well. Moreover, Comte tried to demonstrate his respect for women in another way. He declared that they were better able to appreciate a “great mental revolution” because their situation made them “more impartial and more disengaged from philosophical prejudices.” He pointed out that Queen Christina and other women were “the first to understand” and “protect” Descartes, whom he fancied to be his predecessor. He assumed that in twenty years, there would be “a strong proportion of ladies” among the fifty people or so who would be won over to his cause. Indeed, he suggested that no philosophical system could be effective without the support of women. Thus the women’s movement undeniably affected the way he began to present his doctrine. Before even meeting de Vaux, he intended to devote part of the Syst`eme de politique positive to the woman question.321 Connected to the problem of gender was Comte’s appreciation of the emotions. Sarah Austin found Comte to be overly interested in intellectual matters. Born into a famous family of dissenters, she did not understand Comte’s lack of concern for the spiritual aspect of human existence.322 Nor did she consider him empathetic or warm. After telling him how sad she was that Guizot’s daughter was dying, she wrote, “I cry, and I pray to God; two things which will appear equally stupid to you. . . . You will think a bit less of my mind, but I defy you to scorn me – and you know whether I detest you for your anti-religiosity.”323 Forced to defend himself, Comte protested that he did have feelings and could cry if he thought about the pain of others: “God is not any more necessary . . . to love or to cry than to judge and to think.” Most importantly, he again voiced second thoughts about the Cours. 319 320 321

322 323

Louis Bucciarelli and Nancy Dworsky, Sophie Germain: An Essay in the History of Elasticity (Boston: D. Reidel, 1980), 11. Comte to Mme Austin, July 22, 1844, CG, 2:273. Comte to Mme Austin, March 4, 1844, CG, 2:242–3. See also Synth`ese subjective ou Syst`eme universel des conceptions propres a` l’´etat normal de l’humanit´e (Paris, 1856; Paris: Fayard, 2000) [hereafter Synth`ese], 729, 829. Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Troubled Lives, 7. Mrs. Austin to Comte, April 3, 1844, “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin,” RO, 2d ser., 18 (January 1899), 137.

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In a way, the text had trapped him, for it had given readers the wrong impression of his enterprise and of his own character. He admitted that he had devoted his life to a work that was “austere and methodical” in dealing with ideas, but he insisted that this undertaking had not prevented him from experiencing the “regular bursts of universal love and selfless contemplation” usually connected with religion. He argued that positivism would soon develop to the point where it could embrace the realm of the emotions and do away with the religious “costume that they had to assume during the infancy of human reason.” He wrote: “I feel . . . that all the noble sentiments of love and exaltation which were directed . . . by the theological philosophy will be able to find in other forms a nourishment that is at least equivalent in the new speculative regime.” As he had already suggested in the Cours, “tender and generous sentiments” could not be stimulated only by “vague, arbitrary, and nebulous ideas.”324 Thus Comte’s friendship with a woman such as Sarah Austin forced him to reconsider the importance of the emotions. Before even meeting de Vaux, he committed himself to formulating “the sentimental character” of positivism. It was already clear to him that positivism could not fully replace theology unless it went beyond the confines of speculation to include the domain of the emotions. Although Comte was still far from advocating the creation of a new religion at this point, it is interesting to note that he seemed to view certain religious practices, such as prayers, as expressions of “ecstatic emotions or general inspirations” that were basic to human nature.325 As the emotions grew more important to him, his appreciation of their religious forms would grow. And perhaps he became more willing to adopt a religious form for his own system once he realized positivism would in this guise have greater success with women, who were traditionally considered more religious by nature. As he was rejected by the males around him – Tabari´e, Valat, Mill, and his colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique – he began to pin his hopes increasingly on the support of the opposite sex. He must have been pleased when Sarah Austin wrote him months after their religious argument: “There are a thousand ways of being a good Christian, and you, dear Monsieur Comte, you have your own way, which I love and venerate with my whole heart. To serve men, that is the best imitation of Jesus Christ. Despite what you think, I am imposing on you the character of an excellent Christian.”326 Comte and Sarah Austin saw each other and wrote frequently throughout 1844. Austin even introduced him to the painter Lady 324 326

Comte to Mme Austin, April 4, 1844, CG, 2:245–6. 325 Ibid., 245–6. Madame Austin to Auguste Comte, September 12, 1844, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (March 1900):278.

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Gordon ( Julia Isabella Levina Bennet).327 But their relationship was interrupted in April 1845, when Austin and her husband took a long trip to Germany and England. In December 1845, Comte voiced his annoyance to Mill that despite the fact that they had promised twice to write to him, he had not heard a word. Had John Austin died, he wondered.328 By this point, Mill was very displeased with Comte, who had in the same letter formally condemned Grote, Molesworth, and Currie for not continuing to subsidize him. Mill simply responded that the Austins were healthy and had already returned to Paris.329 But perhaps having heard of Comte’s offensive behavior from Mill and their other friends Grote and Molesworth, the Austins were not eager to renew their relationship. Sarah Austin waited until early February before inviting Comte to their apartment.330 Two months later, de Vaux died. Comte and Sarah Austin grew closer once again for a short period, as she sought to console him. Their conversations grew so intimate that she later regretted having told Comte so much about her marital problems.331 She showed her respect for him and his overall sensitivity when she pointed out that his sorrow would last a long time because he was a man of strong, deep feelings.332 Comte felt vindicated, for he had always suspected that she shared “the prejudices” of her metaphysical friends, who believed the triumph of positivism would lead to the “dryness of the heart.”333 Now she could see that her friends were wrong. The “vulgar” accusations that positivism was arid could be leveled only against the “dispersive specialties that had to prepare for the positive philosophy.”334 Despite this closeness, Comte’s relationship with Sarah Austin soon ended. In 1847, she was distracted by the death of her grandson and other relatives. The following year the Austins fled from Paris during the revolution and returned definitively to England. Besides the problem of distance, chauvinism may have played a part in their 327 328 329 330 331 332

333 334

Comte to Sarah Austin, September 11, 1844, Fonds Lacroix 9623, number 1511, Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal. Comte to Mill, December 18, 1845, CG, 3:248. Mill to Comte, January 12, 1846, CG, 3:416. Madame Austin to Comte, February 2, 1846, in “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (May 1900):419. Madame Austin to Comte, in Laffitte, May 5, 1846, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (May 1900):424. Madame Austin to Comte, May 25, 1846, Madame Austin to Comte, February 2, 1846, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 20 (May 1900):425. Comte to Mme Austin, May 26, 1846, CG, 4:13. “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847 pour l’ouverture de la 17e` me ann´ee du Cours philosophique d’astronomie populaire,” January 17, 1847, page three, MAC.

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estrangement. Praising the tranquility and “good sense” of the English people, Sarah Austin condemned the violence and authoritarianism of the French and found Comte’s claims for French national superiority “astonishing” and “grotesque.” Because Comte believed Paris was to be the center of the positive regime, he must not have been pleased by her condemnation of his “national arrogance.”335 Her letter of September 1848 is the last one that remains of their correspondence. Sarah Austin played an important, albeit temporary, role in Comte’s life. After hearing Comte talk at length about her, Pierre Laffitte discerned his “noble and elevated affection” for the Englishwoman.336 It is evident that Austin was a transitional figure between Caroline Massin and Clotilde de Vaux. She was able to respond to his need for love at a critical moment in his life, a time when he had just separated from his wife and was losing his position at the Ecole Polytechnique. Because she resembled Massin and de Vaux in her intelligence and insistence on her own independence, she demonstrates the fact that Comte was drawn, in spite of himself, to nontraditional women, who in varying degrees refused to assume a passive role. She was at least partly responsible for changing his views on women. 335 336

Madame Austin to Comte, September 29, 1848, in Laffitte, “Correspondance d’Aug. Comte avec Mme Austin: Suite,” RO, 2d ser., 21 ( July 1900):128. Laffitte, “Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Mme Austin,” 432.

Chapter 3

Clotilde de Vaux and the Initial Encounter with Comte

A woman always inspires more or less the sentiments that she wants. Clotilde de Vaux, July 1845

introduction In late 1844, Comte met Clotilde de Vaux, the woman to whom he later attributed his emotional development and most important ideas. His disciples and most historians have generally accepted his judgment about the impact she had on his evolution. Yet analyses of their relationship have usually been from Comte’s point of view. We have already seen that his judgments about what influenced him are not always valid. To take the most salient example, Comte’s repeated denials that he was influenced by Saint-Simon were meant to hide the fact that he took the main outlines of positivism from his former mentor’s works. Similarly, Comte’s contrary assertion that the path of his “second career” was determined by his love for Clotilde de Vaux needs to be re-examined. Were there other factors at work that molded Comte’s general direction? Did de Vaux offer Comte the passive, dependent female companionship that he seemed to seek? Did she even love Comte? Because Comte overshadowed her and only spoke of her as the ideal woman, it is hard to answer these questions and even to fathom de Vaux’s character. Inasmuch as Comte’s campaign to integrate worship of de Vaux into his Religion of Humanity seemed demented, scholars who studied his intellectual development tended to dismiss her, considering his relationship with her an embarrassment. John Stuart Mill, among others, accused her of being responsible for Comte’s decline.1 Because Comte appeared mad or, at the very least, deluded by his love for her, de Vaux was deemed unworthy of serious attention. In 1928, Dr. Georges Morin called her a proud “little woman” with “literary pretensions” and a “surly,” “neurotic,” and “vain” character.2 Morin’s portrait of de Vaux contradicted Comte’s image of 1 2

John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 125. Georges Morin, “Auguste Comte, M´edecin de Clotilde de Vaux,” Paris M´edicale 4 (October 1928): 239, 243.

133

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her. While Comte exploited her image to appeal to women and to show the importance of regenerating society by infusing it with feminine affection, Morin represented her in a disparaging manner to discourage intelligent women from seeking a profession. Thus, even when attention was focused on her, de Vaux served only as a useful instrument of a male-dominated culture. Yet feminist scholars have also neglected her, ignoring her voluminous correspondence with Comte, which was first published in 1884. Thus de Vaux seems to be at first glance to be a dull target of a man undergoing a midlife crisis.3 But if one analyzes her more closely, keeping in mind what Karen Offen has called “the sexual politics of the July Monarchy,” Clotilde de Vaux emerges as a woman intent on establishing her identity as a respectable woman of ideas free from the control of others.4 the young clotilde marie To understand Comte’s relationship with de Vaux, it is first necessary to review her background, which helps to explain the peculiar nature of her situation when she met Comte.5 Clotilde’s mother, HenrietteJos´ephine de Ficquelmont, came from an important aristocratic family from the Lorraine which had lost its estate and most of its fortune when it had been forced to flee to Germany during the French Revolution. While still an emigr´ee, Henriette, who sympathized to a certain extent with the left, met a poor captain in the Napoleonic army, Joseph-Simon Marie, who was something of a Casanova. By this time, she was thirty-two years old. Over the objections of her family, she married him in 1813. A product of the French Revolution, this marriage between a woman of noble background and a man of peasant origins would not, however, prove to be successful. Having moved with his wife to a poor section of the second arrondissement in Paris, Captain Marie was forced to retire from the army in 1815 with a small pension of 1,200 francs. His wife had a small supplementary income of six hundred francs thanks to her brother, Count Charles-Louis de Ficquelmont, the only member of the family who had any money. An emigr´e and former general in 3 4 5

Comte published their correspondence in his Testament, the first edition of which was published in 1884. Karen Offen, “Women’s History as French History,” Journal of Women’s History 8 (1996): 153. The information in this section is taken from Charles de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire d’Auguste Comte et de Clotilde de Vaux (Paris: Calmann-L´evy, 1917), 2–94; Andr´e Th´erive, Clotilde de Vaux ou le d´eesse morte (Paris: Albin Michel, 1957), 7–37. De Rouvre’s book is the standard work. He was a relative of Clotilde de Vaux and based his research on family archives.

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the Austrian army, he was appointed by Emperor Francis I minister plenipotentiary to Sweden in 1815, the first of his many important diplomatic posts. (In 1848 he replaced Klemens Wenzel von Metternich as Austrian foreign minister and then became first minister.6 ) Very wealthy, he helped the other Ficquelmonts as much as he could. But the Maries’ money did not go far, especially because the family grew rapidly. Clotilde was born in 1815, Maximilien in 1819, and El´eonor (L´eon) in 1820. As a strong Bonapartist, Captain Marie had difficulties finding a job in Restoration France. Finally, around 1824, his wife used her connections among the nobility to get him a position as a tax collector in Sainte-Genevi`eve near Beauvais and then in M´eru in the department of the Oise. This post brought in a mere 1,800 francs a year. Their daughter, Clotilde, was a quick-witted but nervous child, who suffered from intestinal and chest problems. Sometimes she annoyed people around her because she was demanding and petulant. She never got along well with her father, who was strict, rude, and stingy. As a chevalier of the L´egion d’Honneur, he was delighted to send Clotilde to a school of the L´egion d’Honneur in Paris, where he did not have to pay for her education or room and board. Before going to this school, which was run by the sisters of the Mother of God, Clotilde had to be baptized at the comparatively late age of nine. Like many other French people during the Revolution, her parents had lost the formal habits of religion. Only when Clotilde later spent a summer with her mother’s sister, an abbess, did she go through a pious period, which lasted until her departure from her school. Nevertheless, at the school, Clotilde refused to study or obey the strict nuns, who forced her to repeat a grade in 1829. When she turned nineteen, she went home to M´eru. She was happy to renew her deep ties to her mother. For hours, they would discuss ways to help the poor and improve society. But soon she found life at home almost as lonely as the one she had left behind in Paris. She hardly ever saw her brothers, who were away at boarding school in Orl´eans. Her wish for companionship was soon to be answered. In 1835, the marquis de Mornay, a deputy from the region, proposed to Captain Marie that he get help in tax collection from a young man, Am´ed´ee de Vaux. Coming from a respectable local family, de Vaux had returned the year before from a long stay in the colonies, mainly the island of R´eunion, where he had gone after having failed to complete his medical studies in Paris due to laziness and debauchery. Captain Marie agreed to the plan. Soon Am´ed´ee was wooing Clotilde with stories 6

Kenneth W. Rock, “Karl Ludwig Count von Ficquelmont,”in Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions, edited by James G. Chastain, http://www.ohiou.edu/∼Chastain/dh/ficquel.htm (accessed November 11, 2007).

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about his adventures abroad. Not long afterward, the two young people decided to marry. However, they faced a huge obstacle: neither of them had any money. Amed´ee’s father had been secretary of the prefecture in Beauvais but had died a few years before. The family had no real income. To solve the problem and give Clotilde a kind of dowry, the marquis helped to formulate a plan whereby Captain Marie would retire and the thirty-year-old Am´ed´ee would take his place as tax collector. Henriette saw through this plan immediately. She knew that the de Vaux family, without making a single sacrifice, was working out a business deal whereby the shiftless Am´ed´ee would use his dubious aristocratic name to obtain finally a decent job and wife in the neighborhood. She wrote to her daughter: “The young man has none of the energy that a true attachment gives; he has none of the courage of the man who has self-confidence. He is gentle, but always indecisive; he fears everything, because he calculates too much.”7 According to Charles de Rouvre, the grandson of Maximilien Marie (Clotilde’s brother), Clotilde sought to marry Am´ed´ee not because she loved him but because she loved the idea of marriage. She wanted to escape from her father, who was becoming increasingly avaricious and tyrannical as he lost money in reckless financial adventures. Captain Marie did not like Am´ed´ee at all but was interested in retiring. Remembering perhaps her own pain caused by waiting until she was thirty-two to marry, Henriette then reluctantly agreed to the union. The marriage took place on September 28, 1835. Afterwards, Captain Marie and his wife moved to Paris, while Clotilde stayed with her new husband in M´eru, where he took over the tax collector’s office. As a spouse, Clotilde upheld the bourgeois ideal of the separation of spheres, which was being strongly promoted in the late 1830s, after having been questioned by the Saint-Simonians earlier in the decade.8 Clotilde undoubtedly imbued the traditional views of marriage espoused by her family. Her uncle, the Comte de Ficquelmont, reviewed the typical duties of a wife: “The condition of the woman is different from that of the man. The house . . . is her empire and her existence, it is there that all the duties of daughter, wife, and mother are placed; it is thus only there that she can find happiness.”9 Clotilde tried to adhere to this cult of domesticity. Though she was very frustrated by Am´ed´ee’s indecisiveness, she decided not to interfere in his affairs. 7 8 9

Henriette Marie to Clotilde Marie, n.d., in Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 55. Mich`ele Riot-Sarcey, La D´emocratie a` l’epreuve des femmes: Trois figures critiques du pouvoir, 1830–1848 (Paris: Albin-Michel, 1994), 121–8. Comte de Ficquelmont, quoted in Th´erive, Clotilde de Vaux, 28.

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Nevertheless, she began to wonder if he was not peculiarly uncommunicative about his business dealings.The truth was that he was secretly gambling, sometimes going as far as Paris to amuse himself. Although she was unaware of his activities in this realm, it became clear to her that he had no interest in his work and no prospects for advancement. Disturbed by Am´ed´ee’s cold, strange behavior and afraid of the dangers of having children because of her poor health, Clotilde resigned herself to leading a monotonous, unfulfilling life. Listening to her complaints, her family thought she was neurasthenic.10 In June 1839, three days before an inspector of finances was to arrive to look at Am´ed´ee’s books, the young man suddenly disappeared. In the chimney of his office were found piles of burned papers, the accounts of the last three fiscal years. He had tried to destroy these records to cover up the fact that he had falsified them and taken taxpapers’ money to pay for his gambling debts. He had stolen tens of thousands of francs not only from the state and the commune, but from different individuals who had deposited their money with him for safe keeping. Clotilde was disgraced by this scandal, which was widely reported in the press.11 In an instant, she became known as the wife of a thief and fugitive. She was reduced to the clothes she wore on her back, for everything that she owned was sold to pay her husband’s debts. It turned out that Am´ed´ee had fled to Li`ege in Belgium, where he found work in a candy shop. In one long, melodramatic letter to her, he proclaimed his innocence, fended off rumors that he had had affairs, and blamed his woes on his family, especially on his allegedly adulterous mother. Declaring his love, he begged Clotilde her to pardon him.12 Horrified at seeing the true character of her husband, she resolved never to respond. After writing in vain and pleading with Clotilde’s brother Max for news, Am´ed´ee went to the Dutch East Indies and was never heard from again.13 Clotilde found herself in an impossible situation. Because divorce was prohibited, she was still married to her husband and had to use his last name even though she would never see him again and he had caused her much shame. The de Vaux family, keeping their distance, 10 11

12 13

Ibid. See Journal de l’Oise, no. 51, June 22, 1839, page 2; no. 52, June 26, 1839, 1; no. 53, June 26, 1839, 1–2, Archives d´epartementales de l’Oise, 120 PRSP 13. I would like to thank the archivist Jean-Marie Terrier for his kindness in sending me photocopies of these issues. See letter from Am´ed´ee de Vaux to Clotilde de Vaux, n.d., MAC. It is reproduced in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 70–85. Letter from Am´ed´ee de Vaux to Maximilien Marie, June 28, 1840, MAC.

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did not offer any aid. Despite the fact that she was an attractive woman of twenty-four, she could not remarry unless he died. And if he died, it was improbable that she would hear about it because she had no contact with him. In any case, his imminent demise seemed to be an unlikely possibility. So what could she do? She was penniless but could not work without losing her status as a middle-class woman – a status that was already endangered by the scandal that marginalized her. And in truth, her poor health and lack of skills would not have enabled her to support herself in an independent fashion even if she had tried. Although the main reason she had married was to escape from her family, de Vaux now was forced to live with her parents. What made matters worse was that her parents were already struggling to survive.14 De Vaux could not ask her parents for a single sou for her own needs. Her mother begged for assistance from her own brother, now the Austrian ambassador to the court of Naples. In 1842, he began to give de Vaux an annual allowance of eight hundred francs.15 Her mother kept most of the money to pay for her room and board and gave her only three hundred francs as pocket money for the entire year to pay for clothes, toiletries, and so forth. She made de Vaux promise not to tell her father anything about this arrangement. Comte believed that the purpose of this secret was to increase her despotic hold over her daughter.16 Feeling as confined as she had in her boarding school and in M´eru, de Vaux decided after several trying years to realize her goal of independence by writing, an occupation that offered many nineteenthcentury women a way to earn money in a respectable fashion. We have already seen that Sarah Austin had recourse to writing to support herself. Due to the revival of the women’s emancipation movement and the rise of the popular press, the “woman of ideas” became an increasingly visible figure in the 1830s and 40s. George Sand, Delphine Gay de Girardin, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, and Flora Tristan were among the prominent French women writers and activists who sought to use the printed word to influence public opinion.17 De Vaux’s own mother also served as a role model. Henriette Marie published brochures on poverty that offered remedies for the 14 15 16 17

M´emoire of Madame Marie, n.d., M.A.C. There are several versions of this statement in the MAC. De Vaux to Comte, October 7, 1845, CG, 144. De Rouvre seems incorrect when he puts this sum at six hundred francs. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 93. Comte to Clotilde de Vaux, November 10, 1845, CG, 3:186. Janis Bergman-Carton, The Woman of Ideas in French Art, 1830–1848 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 1. On Sand’s influence, see Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 37.

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“social question.” In 1835, she wrote Proposition d’une association religieuse et perp´etuelle des femmes, pour travailler au soulagement des malheureux et a` l’extirpation de la mendicit´e, which aimed to create an association of women to help poor people so that they would not become beggars.18 In 1844, she published Le Sculpteur en bois, which underscored the need for philanthropy to help destitute people, who were not “dangerous” or immoral.19 Whereas Henriette Marie chose to speak out against social injustice on an abstract plane, de Vaux was attracted to writing as a means of catharsis; her stories allowed her to vent her feelings of frustration and anger at social codes that circumscribed her behavior. Writing not only helped her secure a new identity but also gave her life meaning and purpose. comte’s fir st me etings with clotilde de vaux Someone who both challenged and encouraged her decision was Auguste Comte. He met Clotilde de Vaux through her brother Max. Many years before, in 1837, Max had been denied admission to the Ecole Polytechnique by Comte, who felt he was too young and unprepared. Max was then admitted the following year. They soon became friends, for Max greatly admired Comte as a teacher and scholar. After Max graduated and became an officer at the Ecole d’Application in Metz, he sent Comte an essay he had written on mathematics.20 Comte gently informed him that the problem he was analyzing had already been solved in the eighteenth century. Encouraging him to send him more of his essays, Comte advised Max to deepen his knowledge of “intellectual history,” especially by reading original works instead of textbooks, whose value was grossly overstated in the educational system.21 Comte’s remarks on the need for greater creativity inspired Max to ponder quitting the army to become a true scholar.22 Comte tried to dissuade him. Speaking from experience, Comte warned him that attaining success as a scholar was difficult when one had “a pronounced character and an independent mind” as Max did. Moreover, Comte was not sure he could be of much help to him because people discounted him (Comte) as an “eccentric.”23 But after Comte visited him in Metz, where they discussed the young man’s plans, Max decided to go ahead with his 18

19 20 21 22 23

Mme Marie n´ee du Ficquelment, Proposition d’une association religieuse et perp´etuelle des femmes, pour travailler au soulagement des malheureux et a` l’extirpation de la mendicit´e (Paris, 1835), 12. Mme Marie, n´ee Ficquelmont, Le Sculpteur en bois, r´ecit enti`erement vrai (Paris, 1844), 56. Maximilien Marie to Comte, March 28, 1841, MAC. Comte to Maximilien Marie, April 15, 1841, CG, 2:4. Maximilien Marie to Comte, two letters both dated June 27, 1841, MAC. Comte to Maximilien Marie, July 4, 1841, CG, 2:13.

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resignation. Captain Marie was furious that his son was following in Comte’s footsteps. Max had a hard time, as Comte had imagined he would. Yet Comte managed to get his prot´eg´e students to tutor as well as a temporary job at the Institut Laville.24 Besides teaching, Max became a scientific writer for the republican Journal du Peuple and published a controversial work on mathematics, Discours sur la nature des grandeurs n´egatives et imaginaires (1843). Again speaking from experience, Comte tried to prevent him from publishing the preface to this book, which criticized the Academy of Sciences and the entire scientific establishment, especially its teaching methods, but to no avail.25 Max, nevertheless, dedicated the work to him in the warmest possible terms, referring to Comte’s “touching goodness” and “encouraging words.”26 Comte reciprocated; in his Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, he commended the “young geometer M. Marie” on his “profound” manner of approaching certain mathematical problems.27 Max further complicated his life in January 1844, when he married Philiberte-F´elicie Aniel, a penniless provincial pianist who was only fifteen years old. Because he did not earn enough money to support her, he and his wife moved in with his parents at 24, rue Pav´ee. (Their apartment was in the old Hˆotel Lamoignon, now the Biblioth`eque historique de la Ville de Paris.) Captain Marie fled from this crowded apartment and took a room far away at 18, rue Miromesnil. Fulfilling one of her dreams, de Vaux moved in February to her own small apartment on 7, rue Payenne, which was situated a block away from her mother and brother’s place.28 It was on the top floor of a fourstory building with a mansarde roof. Two of the rooms looked out on the street: the drawing room and her bedroom, which had a little alcove containing her bed. Although her apartment had a kitchen, she continued to take her meals at her mother and brother’s lodgings. Her mother still used about half of the money she received from her uncle to pay for the rent and food at the rue Pav´ee. 24

25 26 27 28

Comte to Maximilien Marie, December 18, 1841, June 14, 1843, September 26, 1844, November 2, 1844, CG, 2:24, 167, 286, 294; Maximilien Marie to Comte, June 15, 1843, MAC. Max also taught mathematics at the Institut Bourdon. Comte to Maximilien Marie, July 30, 1841, CG, 2:17; Th´erive, Clotilde de Vaux, 38–9; De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 105–6. Maximilien Marie, Discours sur la nature des grandeurs n´egatives et imaginaires (Paris: CarilianGoeury and Victor Dalmont, 1843), vi. The book was republished in 1844. Trait´e e´l´ementaire de g´eom´etrie analytique, 25n. De Vaux’s apartment, which was on the top floor, is no longer in existence. Not long after her death, the landlords demolished it to add two more stories to the building. It is also worth noting that a plaque commemorating Clotilde de Vaux is misplaced on the building at 5, rue Payenne. Neglecting to verify her address, Brazilian positivists bought the house in 1903 and erected this plaque in her memory. In the house, they built a temple of Humanity, according to Comte’s model. It is still open to visitors. See Paolo Carneiro, introduction to CG, 3: p. xi, lxxxii; Th´erive, Clotilde de Vaux, 13–14.

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After Max married, he invited his mentor to his apartment as often as he could. It was there that Max introduced Comte to his sister, Clotilde, in April 1844.29 By this time, she had lived almost five years in an undefined state, imprisoned in a sort of semi-widowhood. Although she was only twenty-nine, her bourgeois mores forbade her to pursue intimate relations with the opposite sex. According to Max’s wife, when de Vaux met the forty-six-year-old Auguste Comte, he was short, pot-bellied, and balding, with a bothersome strand of hair in the middle of his large forehead. Sometimes when he spoke, a bit of foamy saliva oozed out of one corner of his mouth. He squinted because of his extreme near-sightedness. One eye was sticky and teared constantly.30 He had various tics, such as twisting his neck from one side to the other. As usual, he was dressed all in black as if to replicate a priest’s frock. After seeing him for the first time, de Vaux could not restrain herself from giggling and whispering to her sister-in-law, “He is so ugly! He is so ugly!”31 Comte did not feel the same about her. He found her pale delicate face, light brown ringlets, and large blue eyes alluring. With her quiet charm and grace, she became yet another reason to frequent the Marie residence. Comte began to go there as often as he could, for he grew very fond of the entire family. He liked to discuss science and academic politics with Max, while listening to the lovely melodies his wife played on the piano. Henriette became a very good friend because her interest in social regeneration coincided with his. Comte read and complimented Le Sculpteur en bois; he could not help but notice her emphasis on the need to make “human fraternity” the “universal religion.”32 He also liked her paintings. She had made a pleasant 29 30

31

32

De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 109. Comte said he met her in October 1844, but de Rouvre says Comte was mistaken. See Comte to Massin, January 10, 1847, CG, 4:96. Comte would not wear glasses because he did not like instruments that changed what was natural in the human organism. (Similarly, he was not enthusiastic about the telescope and microscope because they led to useless research.) But he did carry a lorgnette when he took a walk. In a copy of a note of Pierre Laffitte, made by Paulo Carneiro, there is an allusion to Comte’s having lost an eye around November 1846. Perhaps it was the same eye that was bothering him when he met Vaux. The original note appears to be lost, and there is no corroborating evidence. “Note of Pierre Laffitte to a letter of November 29, 1846 from A.C. to Barbot de Chement,” November 29, 1879, copy made by Paolo Carneiro, n.d., MAC. See also Deroisin, Comte, 90, 124. Clotilde de Vaux, quoted in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 110. See also ibid., 266; Deroisin, Comte, 91. Comte was small, but it is unclear how short he actually was. When he entered the Ecole Polytechnique, his records state that he was 5’2”. Yet according to Comte’s passport, he was just under 5’5” tall. Either the bureaucrat made an error, or he grew three inches from age sixteen, when he started Ecole Polytechnique, to adulthood. See Pickering, Comte, 1:24; Comte’s passport, dated August 12, 1844, MAC. Madame Marie, Le Sculpteur en bois, 19. See also Comte to Maximilien Marie, November 2, 1844, CG, 2:294. Henriette Marie gave Comte not only this work but her previous one, Proposition d’une association religieuse et perp´etuelle des femmes. They are both in the MAC. Comte gave her Gall’s works.

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miniature of de Vaux when the latter was ten.33 Now she insisted that Comte sit for her so that she could do his portrait.34 By September, she assured him that he was “truly as much loved as [he was] respected” by the whole household.35 A year later, they considered him “a member of the family.”36 And he, too, marveled at how comfortable he felt among them. Partly fulfilling his need for “domestic affections,” they represented, in effect, his surrogate family.37 Apparently, Comte saw de Vaux less often than the other members of the family because she usually came for dinner, the time he felt obliged to leave.38 Sympathizing with her plight, he admired her from afar for months. He did not dare to write to her until April 30, 1845, a year after they had met. They had evidently been talking about literature, and he rushed to send her a good translation of Tom Jones. Thanking him, she hoped that in their conversation about the book, she would benefit from his “fine and noble lessons.”39 This first exchange is ironic on several levels. In reacting against his wife, Comte had once suggested to Valat that he did not care much for women who talked about novels; all that mattered was that they be sweet and self-sacrificing.40 Thus as with his wife, who had once run a cabinet de lecture, and with Sarah Austin, who wrote for a living, he was attracted to an intelligent woman in spite of himself. He was impressed by “the elevation of her ideas.”41 In fact, he told Massin that de Vaux’s mind was “no less distinguished than hers.”42 And as with Massin, who took mathematics lessons from him to improve her bookkeeping, Comte began his relationship with de Vaux as her teacher. This role was, after all, the one that suited him best and the one with which he was most familiar. But adopting this role made it clear that he was in a position of “superiority,” as de Vaux herself suggested.43 He later self-consciously signed his letters, “Your philosopher, Auguste.”44 As mentioned before, Comte waited a year before he wrote to her. It was as if he had planned for twelve months his whole strategy of how to win her, just as he mentally outlined his books in meticulous detail 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 30. Comte to Mme Marie, September 6, 1844, CG, 2:286. Madame Marie to Comte, September 6, 1844, MAC. Madame Marie to Comte, September 12, 1845, MAC. Comte to Mme Marie, June 8, 1845, CG, 3:39. Comte to de Vaux, May 14, 1845, CG, 3:5. De Vaux to Comte, May 1, 1845, CG, 3:4. Comte to Valat, November 16, 1825, CG, 1:167. Comte to Dr. Pinel-Grandchamp, November 20, CG 3:202. Comte to Massin, January 10, 1847, CG, 4:96. De Vaux to Comte, May 1, 1845, CG, 3:4. Comte to de Vaux, October 143, 1845, CG, 3:152.

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before he actually sat down to write them.45 And as with the Cours, he had trouble dealing with the obstacles that stood in his way. One of the greatest impediments he faced was that his visits to de Vaux were not private.46 Partly because of this obstacle, he began to write her more often in order to go beyond the conventional conversation of her mother’s drawing room. And de Vaux too felt the need to express herself more intimately than she could in that environment. Their correspondence became an important outlet for each of them. During the year of this correspondence – from April 1845 to April 1846 – he wrote her ninety-five letters, many of which were long and bordering on the hysterical. She responded with eighty-six letters, which were usually shorter and less impassioned. She not only responded to the love he offered her but tried to find herself by transcending the traditional familial context that had fashioned her identity.47 Her letters showed greater talent than her other writings. Displaying both humor and wisdom, they were sincere and straightforward, whereas her stories tended to be melodramatic and contrived. Comte and the positivists liked to portray their relationship as one of great purity, harmony, and understanding. But, in fact, the correspondence smacks of sexual tension. Indeed, one scholar remarked that after not having had sex for years, Comte was so avid for it that he could have fallen in love with anyone; de Vaux’s character was immaterial.48 The story of Auguste Comte and Clotilde de Vaux is basically the tale of a man trying to force a woman to accept his sexual advances and his desire to be the center of her universe, while she makes every effort to resist him and create her own autonomous life. Their correspondence sheds light not only on Comte’s personal and intellectual development and de Vaux’s effort to construct a new self, but also on the nineteenth-century battle of the sexes. The fighting started early. One day after dinner in early May 1845, de Vaux went with her brother Max to Comte’s apartment. Comte, Max, and two other disciples talked about mathematics, philosophy, and the Academy of Sciences, leaving de Vaux out of the conversation.49 Comte wrote her a letter of apology on May 14 and asked if he could visit her in her apartment.50 Two days later, on May 16, 45 46 47

48 49 50

De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 129–30. Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:84. Comte numbered all of his correspondence with her because he worried about their letters being lost in the mail. De Vaux refused to do this. Comte to de Vaux, October 21, 1845, CG, 3:161; de Vaux to Comte, November 2, 1845, CG, 3:173. Gould also maintained that the “basic cause” of Comte’s madness was sexual. F. J. Gould to Dr. Hillemand, December 25, 1825, MAC. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 130–32. One of these disciples was Pierre Laffitte, who would become very important. Comte to de Vaux, May 14, 1845, CG, 3:5.

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while walking with Henriette and F´elicie in the neighborhood, he accidentally bumped into de Vaux.51 He tried to make up for the awkwardness of her recent visit but in the midst of their conversation, which as usual involved the other family members, he suddenly exclaimed, “One cannot always think, but one can always love.”52 Though proclaiming what he had always believed, that happiness came from a full emotional life, he inappropriately betrayed his affection for her.53 Everyone was shocked. On May 17, the day after this odd episode, he received a letter from de Vaux in response to his apology of May 14. Insisting that she was simply an “old friend,” she made it clear that she “rarely” received men. But she agreed to see him in the evenings if her relatives were present, chiefly because she enjoyed discussing intellectual matters with him.54 This letter did not dampen his enthusiasm. Instead, it led him to expound on his love for her in the letter he immediately wrote in response. It is obvious that Comte was acting aggressively in accordance with a set plan, not according to her cues. From the start, he assumed that because they were both marginal figures, separated from unsuitable spouses who had not understood them, she was in as much need of love and affection as he was. As revealed in Comte’s relationship with Sarah Austin, he had been searching for a close relationship since his break-up with his wife. In October 1844, he had told Mill that he was very lonely and was disappointed that his “domestic projects” had failed: “Also, there exists in me an entire order of affectionate sentiments which have not been able to undergo sufficient . . . growth.” His work offered only “incomplete” compensation.55 He had seen one potential cause of this problem as early as the mid-1820s, when he lamented that his emotional needs, in contrast to his intellectual desires, were unfulfilled, and that people were more interested in his mind than his heart.56 Having always had difficulty finding people who were compatible with him both intellectually and emotionally, he craved human contact. This tone of desperation permeated Comte’s campaign to win de Vaux. In addition, he wanted her for his own sexual gratification. Perhaps due to impotence, Comte had enjoyed no sexual relations since 1834. He now discovered a “charming” reawakening of his strong sexual 51 52 53

54 55 56

Comte later maintained that their meeting on May 16, 1845 was the beginning of his moral regeneration. Comte, “Dixi`eme Confession annuelle,” August 19, 1855, CG, 8:98. Testament (1896 ed.), 146. In one of his first letters to Clotilde, he reiterated this point, proclaiming that the “sweet exchange of sentiments and ideas” was “the principal source of human happiness.”Comte to de Vaux, May 2, 1845, CG, 3:4. De Vaux to Comte, May 15, 1845, CG, 3:12. Comte to Mill, October 21, 1844, CG, 2:287. See for example, Comte to Valat, November 16, 1825, CG, 1:165.

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urges. From the start, that is, in his letter of May 17, 1845, he did not hesitate to insist on his physical attraction to her, alluding to her “pretty hands” and overall beauty. He even suggested that his desire to have sex with her was keeping him up at night: These precious emotions, these intimate effusions, these delicious tears, this entire collection of affections, which is made more to be experienced than described, contribute today, in the silence of my long nights, to prolong . . . my passing physical trouble . . . : but I would not voluntarily exchange these ravishing [ravissantes] insomnias for the most perfect health possible.57

Alluding to the fact that he was seventeen years older than she, he assured her that he had preserved “in full physical maturity all the vitality and impetuosity of youth, with all the advantages of its spontaneity.”58 There was no doubt that he wanted an affair with her. All memories of the love that had once existed between him and Massin evaporated as he claimed he had married his first wife out of generosity, not real passion. De Vaux, he said, was the first person he loved in a “pure” and “profound” manner.59 To justify an extramarital relationship, he explained to de Vaux that because it was not their fault that they could not find love in the “regular” social order, they were “morally authorized” to seek satisfaction in an unconventional manner.60 Comte’s notion that his case and that of de Vaux were exceptions to the rules of morality would recur in many of his letters to justify his desire for an extramarital affair. No holds were barred for the philosopher in the midst of a midlife crisis. Moreover, he needed her to satisfy an intellectual objective, that of preparing for his next great work, the Syst`eme de politique positive. Throughout his life, whenever he had to face a difficult intellectual task, he underwent a physical and emotional crisis. In 1826, his discovery of his mission to create a new spiritual power, coupled with the discovery of his wife’s alleged affair, led to an attack of madness. In 1838, when he began writing about sociology, he had to abandon, in Laffitte’s words, “the strictly scientific point of view” and put himself “at the social point of view.”61 This effort led to another crisis, which involved a temporary separation from his wife, his greater interest in the arts, and his adoption of cerebral hygiene. He had a mild crisis in 1842, occasioned by his difficulties in concluding the Cours and 57 58 59 60 61

Comte to de Vaux, May 17, 1845, CG, 3:14, 15. Comte to de Vaux, May 28, 1845, CG, 3:21. Comte to de Vaux, May 22, 1845, CG, 3:390. Comte wisely decided not to send her this letter. Comte to de Vaux, May 17, 1845, CG, 3:13. Note from Laffitte’s correspondence with Comte, June 1, 1845, CG, 2:391. See also Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” June 18, 1848, MAC.

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by his wife’s desire to leave him.62 In 1844, he began to experience symptoms of yet another collapse.63 He became very weak; suffered from rheumatism, insomnia, and stomach problems; and broke out in sores, including an erysipelas, which spread throughout the right side of his face and sent him to bed for ten days. His illnesses were worse than usual because he was tired from his long work on the Cours and his two didactic books, worried about his job at the Ecole Polytechnique, and especially concerned about the Syst`eme de politique positive.64 He told Sarah Austin that he was patiently resigned to his illness in the same way “the most idiotic Christian” would be.65 But his poor physical condition and anxiety about his means of survival made him postpone work on the Syst`eme several times in 1844 and early 1845. If the “affective” and “intellectual” parts of his brain” were taxed at the same time, he feared the “terrible and irreparable return of the fatal episode of 1826.”66 The crisis that originated in 1844 and continued in 1845 was definitely linked to the Syst`eme; Comte knew he was approaching an intellectual watershed, that of introducing his political philosophy. In a rare moment of honesty, he admitted to Mill that he did not know how to make the Syst`eme “sufficiently distinct” from his first work.67 When he suddenly exclaimed to de Vaux and her family, “One cannot always think, but one can always love,” he was hinting at the fact that he felt tired of ruminating on this dilemma.68 The Cours had reorganized ideas and established the new discipline of sociology to eliminate social discord. It had ultimately demonstrated that “neither thought nor action can constitute the essential center of human existence, which must involve especially affection.” Upholding this argument, the Syst`eme was supposed to restructure affections, thereby completing the preparation for the new positive age of science and industry. To write effectively about the complex social and moral issues involved in the Syst`eme, Comte believed he needed more than an intellectual understanding of emotions; it was essential to have a personal experience of them.69 He knew his own 62 63

64 65 66 67 69

Comte never included this episode when he reviewed the serious crises of his life. See Laffitte, note from his correspondence with Comte, June 1, 1845, CG, 3:391–2. Comte to Audiffrent, January 3, 1856, CG, 8:176; Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886): 193. Comte to Mill, October 21, 1844, CG, 2:287–8. Comte to Sarah Austin, September 11, 1844, Fonds Lacroix 9623, number 1511, Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal. This letter is not published in the CG. Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, CG, 2:307. Comte to Mill, October 21, 1844, CG, 2:288. 68 Testament (1896 ed.), 146. Comte to de Vaux, January 27, 1846, CG, 3:305. See also Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, February 25, 1846, CG, 3:79, 334.

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feelings would enter into his political philosophy, and he wanted to develop them to enhance his doctrine.70 Just as in 1838, when he had sought to develop his emotions and aesthetic senses by means of poetry and music to deepen his understanding of humanity, he needed, in effect, a period of emotional intensity to write the part of the Syst`eme treating social and “moral” life.71 Having only begun discussing feelings with Sarah Austin, he counted on an emotionally intense relationship with de Vaux to develop his affections, which he always believed had been stunted due to his poor family and marital relations.72 As Henri Gouhier once pointed out, there was a certain pattern to Comte’s crises; love for a woman was always involved in some fashion.73 Whereas in the previous three crises he had blamed his wife for his problems, in this period of mental instability, he relied on de Vaux to provide him with the requisite material for his second great work. Comte did not hesitate to tell de Vaux that she did indeed fulfill this function. As early as May 17, he explained that it was his feeling toward her, not the grand, abstract “sentiments of universal love,” that was finally developing his “moral life.”74 the battle betwe e n the sexe s Comte’s bold proclamation of love in his letter of May 17 surprised and pained de Vaux. After receiving two more letters from him, she coolly explained that she had been depressed for the past year and had hardly enough force to live from day to day, let alone indulge in impulsive acts, presumably such as accepting his invitation to become lovers. She felt Comte did not really know her at all. With a touch of sarcasm, she told him to use his “fine faculties” regarding her situation to determine the validity of his view that she was sad because of him. He would be better off if he followed her example and kept his feelings to himself. Comte quickly apologized, promising to restrain himself more in the future and attributing his problems with her to his lack of experience. He knew he had acted too fast.75 Yet this realization did not make him reconsider the wisdom of his plan of attack. Right away, Comte tried to make de Vaux feel guilty by telling her that his 70 71 72 74 75

Note from Laffitte’s correspondence with Comte, June 1, 1845, CG, 2:392. See also Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:82–3. On the comparison between his love for Clotilde and the growth of his “aesthetic tastes,” see Comte to de Vaux, March 11, 1845, CG, 3:354. Comte to Mill, October 21, 1844, CG, 2:287. 73 Gouhier, La Vie, 185. Comte to de Vaux, May 17, 1845, CG, 3:12–13. Comte to de Vaux, May 21, 1845, CG, 3:18. See also de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 146.

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unfulfilled desire for her was the source of his severe problems with melancholy and insomnia. For months, he would press his demands for more intimacy on her. Young and relatively new to Paris, de Vaux was flattered to be wooed by an important individual. Yet her agenda was different from the one he was trying to impose on her. Comte, the man of ideas, was suffering from intellectual fatigue and wanted stimulation from newly discovered emotions. De Vaux, who he wrongly assumed was typical of the “affective sex,” demanded to be “spared” emotional burdens. For the past two years she had been infatuated with a married man, an experience that taught her that “love without hope kills the body and soul.” Now she sought to achieve something on her own and become a woman of ideas. Just as Comte liked to say to his critics that the age of discussion was over for him, she announced that she was through with the “deadly” business of dabbling in emotions. There was almost a reversal of gender roles in the way she exerted authority and ordered him to be reasonable, to avoid “strong emotions,” and to use his “manly powers” of self-control.76 Her sole desire was for the peaceful solitude that she needed in order to write. She had no intention of pursuing another fruitless relationship that would distract her from her new career – a career that she hoped would satisfy her quest for success and self-fulfillment. In short, she wanted a relationship with Comte only to stimulate her mind, not her emotions, which were the source of great pain to her. In effect, both de Vaux and Comte were in the process of changing their self-representations. Each hoped to use an image they had of the other to achieve this transformation. However, Comte’s image of de Vaux and her picture of him proved to be static, incomplete, and somewhat outdated in view of the fact that both of them sought to move beyond their previous selves. The situation with Comte required great delicacy on de Vaux’s part. It was not politic for her to tell Comte that she would not sleep with him because she found him unattractive and feared losing her bourgeois respectability by flouting convention. Instead, to maintain her distance and to escape the sexual anonymity that threatened her individuality, she used the nineteenth-century assumption that women were devoid of sexual desire.77 Forced to abandon the passive, vulnerable role that she had first adopted as part of her performance as his student, she made him aware that he must make his affection as “innocent” as hers.78 76 77 78

Comte to de Vaux, December 30, 1845, CG, 3:258; de Vaux to Comte, June 5, September 5 and 9, 1845, CG, 3:35, 108, 120. Comte imagined, in true Victorian fashion, that Clotilde, like other women, was “naturally” virtuous, that is, asexual. Comte to de Vaux, May 24, 1845, CG, 3:20. Comte to de Vaux, May 24, 1845, CG, 3:20.

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Comte found her rules of chastity “more painful” than de Vaux could ever imagine.79 Her resistance, in fact, seemed to excite him, and he repeatedly insisted that she give him the “authorization” to make “personal visits.”80 Having studied human nature for thirty years and listened attentively to statements made about her by her brother and mother, he claimed to know her better than she assumed. Nonplused, she continued to turn down his requests. Rejected as a lover, Comte hardly slept at all during the last two weeks of May. To avoid irritating his digestive tract, which he worried could aggravate his situation, he ate no solid food. Gradually, he became so weak that he missed work at the Ecole Polytechnique and for the first time in fifteen years could not give his Sunday course on astronomy.81 Writing the Syst`eme was out of the question. He was so depressed that he could hardly even read poetry, which was his usual source of distraction and consolation. All he could do was stay in bed. He cried often and found some comfort in his tears.82 Surprised by the extent of his collapse, he knew himself well enough to see that he was on the verge of another attack of madness, brought on by the congruence of his emotional and intellectual troubles. Because he had been suffering on and off from this “nervous” malady since August of 1844, recovery would be “slow.”83 He even began to think that Gall was correct in hypothesizing that men with a “feminine and delicate nervous system” like his own experienced periodic bouts of melancholy that corresponded to women’s experience of depression when they menstruated.84 In keeping with the moral beliefs of the century, he was convinced that renouncing immediate gratification improved one’s character and led to future benefits.85 Considering all improvements – moral, intellectual, and physical – to be mutually influential, he stopped drinking wine.86 By late May, he informed de Vaux, that he had mastered his sexual impulses. Morally “purified,” he now “merited” her.87 By having imposed her rules of chastity on Comte, de Vaux achieved, in his eyes, a new preeminence. A devotee of the theater and opera, Comte immediately dramatized her influence on him, 79 81 82 83 84 85

86

87

Ibid. 80 Comte to de Vaux, May 28, 1845, CG, 3:23. Comte to Maximilien Marie, May 30, 1845, CG, 3:24. Note from Laffitte’s correspondence with Comte, June 1, 1845, CG, 2:392. Comte to Maximilien Marie, May 30, 1845, CG, 3:24. Laffitte, conversation with Comte, excerpt in CG, 3:392. Peter T. Cominos, “Innocent Femina Sensualis in Unconscious Conflict,” in Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age, ed. Martha Vicinus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), 155. Comte to Maximilien Marie, May 30, 1845, CG, 3:24. See also Comte to Hadery, August 18, 1853, CG, 7:105; note from Laffitte’s correspondence with Comte, June 1, 1845, CG, 2:392. Comte to de Vaux, May 24, 1845, CG, 2:20n.

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making her solely responsible for his moral rebirth. He claimed that by her superior virtue, she had rid him of his crude male sex drive and transformed him into the virtuous champion of humanity. He could also help humanity because he believed that she was leading him to express his emotions more fully. Before meeting her, he was ashamed of appearing “too sensitive.”88 Realizing that his heart was always “profoundly disposed to tenderness,” he feared that he had overcompensated by paying too much attention to intellectual matters in order not to appear insincere or dishonest.89 The result was that critics had found the Cours dry and positivism unemotional. Yet to him, only “cold pedants” promoted “stupid austerity.”90 He proudly insisted that “several privileged souls” had recognized the “profound implicit sentimentality” of the Cours and told him they had cried over certain passages – passages that he himself had written in tears.91 However, he recognized that the language codes of the day – those of the romantics – were demanding more effusiveness. He hoped the image of his philosophy would change once he addressed moral and social issues. Despite his claims to be indifferent to the opinion of his contemporaries, he wanted his work to be appreciated. Praising de Vaux for making him more benevolent and open, he was sure his moral improvement would benefit his new work because his philosophy sought to develop “the grandeur of human nature,” which depended more on “the generosity of sentiments” than on “the wide range of conceptions.”92 Comte emphasized that de Vaux inspired the “second part” of his “philosophic career,” which would be superior to the first because his ideas would be richer and more powerful, even if they might not be as original.93 His last works would reflect the personal advances he had made in uniting all the different tendencies of thought, feeling, and action within him. Months before she even became ill, he announced to her that he would dedicate the Syst`eme to her. Attributing both his moral and intellectual improvement to her influence on him, he proclaimed that she would one day join those women who had achieved immortality by acting as famous men’s muses.94 If he died before she did, her “noble duty” would be 88

89 90 91 92 93 94

Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:84. See also Comte to Mill, August 8, 1845, CG, 3:90. Comte also mentioned the “shame” he felt in expressing his feelings in Comte to de Vaux, February 22, 1846, CG, 3:328. Comte to de Vaux, January 26, 1846, CG, 3:305. Comte to de Vaux, May 17, 1845, CG, 3:13. Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:84. Comte to de Vaux, May 17, 1845, CG, 3:13. Comte to de Vaux, January 26, 1846, CG, 3:305. Comte to de Vaux, May 17, 24, 1845, February 22, 1846, CG, 3:14, 20, 327. See also Cominos, “Innocent Femina Sensualis,” 155.

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to tell people of his “profoundly sensitive heart, which, although was said . . . to exhibit austere coldness, was always at the level of . . . [his] mind.”95 In effect, she would make sure that people knew he had been kind and tender so that he would not be remembered as having been cold and aloof. There is something poignant about Comte’s insecurity regarding his character. Comte’s attitude toward de Vaux was in many ways typical of his epoch. Reflecting the impact of the cult of domesticity and the model of the “perfect lady,” most nineteenth-century men believed that women were “naturally” virtuous and morally superior, chiefly because they had no sexual desire.96 De Vaux both rejected and exploited this assumption. She performed her femininity to her advantage to get what she wanted from Comte. She understood his melodramatic, moral universe; like him, she was an enthusiast of literature and the opera and was drawn to the theatrical. Standing up to the great philosopher of positivism, de Vaux told Comte, “I place you . . . on the pedestal that you are erecting for me; it suits you better by far than it does me.” She was particularly angry that he kept asserting that he knew her and found her morally superior: “I have not yet found perfection in others nor in myself. There are large ulcers deep down in every human stomach; the key is to know how to hide them.”97 In effect, she refused to allow Comte to worship her. Such adoration she found disingenuous and constricting; it was further proof that he only wanted to know the side of her that fulfilled his ideal of the perfect woman, which coincided with the image of the empathetic individual he wished to be. According to psychologists, this projection of an idealized self-image onto the object of one’s affections is typical of manic depressives.98 To avoid “embarrassing talks,” de Vaux ordered Comte to discuss matters pertaining to their “heads,” not their hearts.99 She hoped that if they selected roles that privileged the pursuit of knowledge and to that end required emotional concealment, they could create a relationship that would not be based on gender stereotypes, tensions, and inequalities. In seeking independence through knowledge, de Vaux held onto this genderfree vision, despite the fact that she acknowledged artfully hiding her faults to reinforce her virtuous appearance and thereby increase the moral authority associated with being feminine. 95 96 97 98 99

Comte to de Vaux, December 9, 1845, CG, 3:227. Comte to de Vaux, May 24, 1845, CG, 3:20. See also Martha Vicinus, introduction to Suffer and Be Still, vii–xv. De Vaux to Comte, May 29, 1845, CG, 3:24. J. Mar`es, “Maniaque d´epressive ou maniaco-d´epressive (psychose),” Dictionnaire encyclop´edique de psychologie, ed. Norbert Sillamy (Paris: Bordas, 1980), 704. De Vaux to Comte, May 29, December 10, 1845, CG, 3:23, 24, 228.

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Censored by de Vaux, Comte reconfigured his positive philosophy to seduce her, catering to her original self-representation as a student eager for instruction. Extrapolating from his experiences with his mother and sister, he tended to associate women with religion and assumed that one large stumbling block to the development of their relationship was de Vaux’s fear that he was overly critical of Catholicism. This worry seemed unfounded, for by this point, she was not religious. In fact, Comte accused her at one point of being too Voltairian, that is, too skeptical and critical.100 Nevertheless, on June 2, he took advantage of the coming feast day of her patron saint, Sainte-Clotilde, to write an essay entitled “Lettre philosophique sur la commemoration social,” in which he sought to prove that he was not at all anti-religious. What was important, he said, was to distinguish between the forms of religion during each age of humanity and the functions of religion, which were usually universally valid. In reply to de Vaux’s dismissal of his attempt to put her on a pedestal, Comte declared that the need to imitate models was “inherent in the laws of human nature.” Taking this human tendency and others into account, positivism would develop more systematic religious forms in keeping with the present stage of civilization. In general, positivism would synthesize what was “great or useful” in all the previous stages of history in order to represent “the collective life of our species.”101 Comte pointed out that the ancient custom of apotheosis and the more simple Catholic practice of beatification, which improved it, had encouraged the growth of human sociability, that is, the feeling that each person is related to everyone else in the past and future and that all generations cooperate to produce society. The Catholic sacrament of baptism, which gave each individual a special patron and model to imitate, also increased human solidarity. Comte claimed that positivism would maintain this veneration of worthy ancestors, for the need to imitate models was “inherent in the laws of human nature.” For example, St. Clotilde’s “rights to the eternal gratitude of humanity” for having facilitated the conversion of her husband, Clovis, to Catholicism would be recognized in the positivist version of the Christian calendar. Thus already in 1845 Comte was contemplating the creation of the Positivist Calendar to institute a new system of commemoration, one that would be more inclusive than Catholicism’s. Whereas Catholics did not esteem those outside the bounds of their religion, positivism would respect people of all other times and 100 101

Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:84. At times, she even made fun of “spiritualists.” De Vaux to Comte, September 9, 1845, CG, 3:120. “Lettre philosophique sur la commemoration social,” June 2, 1845, CG, 3:28, 30.

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places. It would commemorate “all types of cooperation, whether public or even private.” Even “the most humble cooperators” would have “the feeling of universal convergence.”102 The “Lettre philosophique sur la commemoration social” is important because, according to Comte, it contained “the first distinct and direct germs” of the Religion of Humanity.103 In 1845, before the death of de Vaux, Comte was moving toward a new conception of worship, the cult of the Great-Being; it would represent the primary method of achieving immortality in the positivist stage of history. Instead of encouraging the typically religious preoccupation with one’s personal salvation, which he considered egotistical and foolish, Comte aimed to direct people’s attention to the improvement of human conditions and human nature. Already in this essay, he was arguing in favor of honoring anyone who contributed in some manner to philosophy, poetry, and social and political life, which corresponded, respectively, to the speculative, sentimental, and active aspects of human existence. (Comte followed Marie-Franc¸ois-Xavier Bichat’s schema, which had been also adopted by Saint-Simon, that there were three main kinds of human skills: thinking, loving, and motor.) By opening this path to recognition to everyone, no matter how apparently insignificant his or her contribution might seem, Comte sought to stress the “popular” side of positivism, as he had already done in the Discours sur l’esprit positif. Instead of appealing to the elite, he had his eyes set on the lower classes, whom he wished to incorporate into society and into his movement. Comte tried to convert de Vaux to positivism by convincing her that his doctrine also had a special appeal to women. Thanks to his arguments with Mill and Sarah Austin and especially his love for de Vaux, Comte’s attitude had slightly changed. Condemning the “foolish distinction between the public order and the private order,” Comte insisted that in the new positive age, women anonymously working in the domestic sphere would be honored for their contributions to civilization.104 Like many early feminists, he realized, in Carolyn Heilbrun’s words, that “the private is the public.”105 Moreover, he no longer dwelled on women’s weaknesses as he had in the Cours, for he knew this was a dangerous topic. Instead, he looked at their strengths, foreshadowing the Cat´echisme positiviste, a book he wrote in 1852 to display his solidarity with women. He held up St. Clotilde as the ideal woman; her qualities were more “moral” than “intellectual,” and she had intervened in society to counter the dominant material force by using her feelings, which represented the 102 104 105

Ibid., 28, 29, 31. 103 Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:58; Syst`eme, 1:xxii. “Lettre philosophique,” June 2, 1845, CG, 3:31. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life, 17.

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essence of the female sex.106 Comte maintained that positivism would be very open to women’s kind of moral or emotional influence because it stressed the importance of spirtual reorganization rather than institutional reforms. Thus, according to Comte, it would revive the forceful role women had played in the past – a role they had lost with the decline of Catholicism. Women would be the “intimate auxiliaries” of positivist philosophers. Because women represented feelings and philosophers were associated with thoughts, there was a “natural affinity” between them. Together they would disseminate moral principles throughout society. Modifying the stance he had taken in the Cours, where he had said that women remained throughout their lives in a “state of continued infancy,” he now devoted positivism to the “adoration of women.”107 Such changes were necessary to convince de Vaux that she had a historically dictated role to work closely with him. De Vaux suspected that his philosophy was not really addressed to women. She also recognized that women ultimately lacked the kind of power men possessed.108 Nevertheless, she was pleased with the “Sainte-Clotilde” as Comte called his essay. His depiction of the future strong role of women echoed in more conservative tones the demands of the women’s rights activists of the 1840s. As an aspiring writer who was not ensconced in the radical camp, de Vaux was flattered by his suggestion that she could make an important contribution to society even though the traditional roles of wife and mother were closed to her. She was indeed to achieve some measure of success, but not in the way Comte desired. In the meantime, Comte wished to publish his “Sainte-Clotilde” in a journal, reflecting the fact that he was trying to erase the line between the private and the public in his own life. Mill rejected it, claiming that Comte’s work was too critical of religion. Armand Marrast refused to publish it in Le National for fear that it was not sufficiently revolutionary. More importantly, he recognized that it was too intimate, long, and philosophical for a journal article.109 Yet Comte interpreted his refusal as a sign that positivism appeared “almost as odious to negative metaphysics as [it does] to retrograde theology.”110 He would move closer to the right in the years to come. Signs of the Religion of Humanity are also apparent in Comte’s “Lettre philosophique sur l’appr´eciation sociale du baptˆeme chr´etien,” which was written shortly afterward, on July 1, in response to Max’s request that he be the godfather of his son. Here too, Comte 106 107 108 109

“Lettre philosophique,” June 2, 1845, CG, 3:29. Ibid., 28, 31, 32, 33; Cours, 2:186. De Vaux to Comte, January 15, 1846, CG, 3:288. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 186. 110 Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:59.

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explained, in effect, that positivism would appropriate Catholic rites because they fulfilled permanent spiritual needs of humanity. “The incorporation of a new being into the human mass” and “the imposition of names which have been chosen for him” were important in every society to mark a “new existence” and took on different forms according to “the dominant opinions.” In the wake of Catholicism’s decline, the temporal power had tried to take up this task, but it simply connected the individual and the state in a legal fashion. This purely civil connection, represented by some sort of state birth certificate, was solely materialistic and thus inadequate. “To spiritualize from the beginning every human life,” it was necessary to have an initiation ceremony, giving the individual the principles, morals, and feelings that directed society and led to happiness. This “system of social incorporation” should be linked to the positivist “system of commemoration.” The name chosen for the individual would provide him or her with a model of behavior. Foreshadowing again the Positivist Calendar, Comte asserted that positivism would offer a greater choice of names or models because it would include anyone who “really honored humanity, without any useless, restrictive prejudice.”111 Like Robespierre, Comte appropriated Catholic ceremonies for his own purposes. Yet unlike the French revolutionary, who sought inspiration in Rousseau, Comte admired Augustine’s City of God, which he was reading at the time, as well as works by Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and F´elicit´e de Lamennais, who had shown him the value of the Middle Ages when he wrote his early opuscules. Though insisting on breaking with the Catholic belief system, Comte sought to recreate the so-called organic society of the Middle Ages. He told Mill in July 1845, “The more I scrutinize this immense subject [medieval Catholicism], the more I am reaffirmed in the sentiments that I had twenty years ago at the time of my work on the spiritual power, that is, that . . . systematic positivists . . . [are] the true successors of the great men of the Middle Ages.” Long before the death of de Vaux, who is said to be responsible for his religious revival, Comte declared his aim of realizing the “social work” of Catholicism.112 de vaux’s search for a room of he r own Comte considered his “Sainte-Clotilde” the true beginning of his friendship with de Vaux.113 For the first time in years, her self-esteem rose. To thank him in person, she persuaded her mother and brother 111 113

“Lettre philosophique,” CG, 3:99. 112 Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:62. Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:79.

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to accompany her to Comte’s place. This was her second visit to his apartment. Evidently, he overreacted, and his ardor in explaining how he developed his “solitary emotions” by singing Italian arias alarmed her.114 To put a stop to his advances, she told him that she had been hopelessly in love with a married man and was resolved not to center her life around yet another man because it diverted her from her quest for success and self-fulfillment. Comte claimed to understand her frustration and declared his commitment to transforming their relationship into a simple friendship. He trusted her in turn with his main secret, his long battle against madness, including his suicide attempt of 1826, which he had not even told his closest friends. He reassured her that despite the fact that his “crisis” of the past three weeks (from May 14 to June 6, 1845) was similar to that of 1826 and that her rejection of his advances had given him a “cruel” blow, he was taking care of himself to avoid a recurrence. He deflected his love for her onto Humanity. “I will again, as in so many previous cases, seek in my public life the noble, but imperfect, compensation for the unmerited misfortunes of my private life. May humanity profit from this inevitable extreme sacrifice! I must henceforth redouble [my] love for it.” Again thinking about the process of commemoration, he lamented that he could receive Humanity’s “holy affection” only later, after he passed away.115 Having been rebuffed as a potential lover, Comte tried to adopt other roles. He particularly enjoyed acting as de Vaux’s “spiritual father,” a term that had decidedly religious overtones reminiscent of the traditional relationship between Catholic women and priests. In fact, like a cleric, he stated that he wished to work for her “improvement.” Expanding the role he had assumed in the beginning of their relationship, that of teacher or adviser, Comte decided to direct her literary career, which he recognized meant a great deal to her as an escape from her personal problems. But he distrusted such a career, for he feared she risked becoming a bluestocking. And as seen in his relations with Sarah Austin, he disliked these literary women, who sought to change women’s condition and seemed to belong to “no sex.”116 Comte told de Vaux: Be careful . . . of developing your talent at the expense of the correctness of your ideas and the purity of your sentiments, [which constitute] two attributes that distinguish you even more from this blue race. You should always know how to avoid letting degenerate into a simple job that which should emanate from a spontaneous inspiration; may 114 115 116

Comte to de Vaux, June 6, 1845, CG, 3:35. See also de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 156–8. Comte to de Vaux, June 6, 1845, CG, 3:36. Comte to Audiffrent, March 9, 1851, CG, 6:33.

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you never become mixed up in the strange and dangerous hustle and bustle which will perhaps envelop you! Above all, my dear friend, I recommend to you true social principles. Leave to the writing crowd the too facile temporary demolition of a frail public morality for the sole profit of some private affections.

Comte feared that culture was becoming debased by its ties to the world of commerce and that writers sought fame by challenging the moral standards that upheld society.117 Evidently, he did not approve of the writers of the 1830s and 1840s, especially the “Bohemians,” who had many connections with the romantic movement. Henri Murger, one of the most famous of them, began to publish stories of Bohemian life in the Corsaire-Satan in March 1845. One of the writers associated with the Bohemians was George Sand, who had produced works quickly for money; some of them, such as La Derni`ere Aldini, investigated untraditional topics, including woman’s desire. Murger, Sand, and others living at the margins of society threatened the bourgeoisie by denouncing its norms, which they felt hampered their development as free individuals.118 Reflecting the typical view of them as closely associated with radical politics and criminality, Comte condemned them as “insane or reprehensible rioters” eager to defy the “domestic order” in order to give into their passions.119 De Vaux must not follow their example of erecting personal desires into universal social principles. He was convinced that post-revolutionary society was a fragile association of men and women, who had to act according to prescribed rules in order to preserve it. Comte’s real purpose in advising de Vaux seems to have been to dissuade her from writing at all. He wished to make sure she stayed the idealized woman she was in his mind. De Vaux sensed his desire to control her and wisely did not show him her main work, a short story called “Lucie.” Much to Comte’s chagrin, she forced him to wait to read “Lucie” until it appeared as a front-page feuilleton in Le National, the prominent republican newspaper run by Armand Marrast, on June 20 and 21, 1845.120 (This was the same journal that had published Littr´e’s articles on the Cours in late 1844.) Inspired by 117 118

119 120

Comte to de Vaux, June 6, 1845, CG, 3:37–8. Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830– 1930 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986), 13–15, 18–19, 26, 37, 43; Curtis Cate, George Sand: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 437. Comte to de Vaux, June 6, 1845, CG, 3:38. See also Seigel, Bohemian Paris, 36. The first and second parts were signed respectively “Mme Clotilde,” and “Clotilde.” Her last name was omitted, reflecting the problems that nineteenth-century women writers faced in asserting their identity. See Le National, June 20, June 21, 1845 at the MAC. For problems of women writers, see Whitney Walton, Eve’s Proud Descendants: Four Women Writers and Republican Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 80–83.

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the epistolary approach of Tom Jones, the book Comte had lent her, “Lucie” consisted chiefly of a series of letters.121 De Vaux was a gifted letter writer, but unlike her personal letters, her fictional ones were stilted and melodramatic. Yet Vaux did not want to hear Comte’s opinion about her style. She did not want him to tamper with what was essentially a story about her own life – a story that expressed her own anguish. In this tale, Lucie, a young beauty living in a village, is abandoned by her husband, a gambler who disappears after killing his associate and stealing valuable securities. His creditors auction off all their belongings, including her jewels and clothes, to pay his debts. At twenty, Lucie is “handed over to isolation, misery, and a position without hope.” Very high-minded and exceptionally intelligent and talented, Lucie soon realizes that men are interested in her only because of her beauty. Resolved to remain single and uninterested in challenging laws against remarriage, she uses “her chain” to her husband as a barrier to ward off men. She tries to lead an independent life by becoming a teacher in Paris. She prefers to read, listen to music, and study philosophy than to associate with men. Her “need to think and feel” becomes the main motivating force of her existence.122 Yet after describing Lucie as a kind of courageous intellectual and emancipated woman, de Vaux had her back away from her position. Lucie claims that she would give up the pleasures of the mind and all success for the superior, regenerating joys of motherhood. It is evident that Lucie is an untraditional woman chiefly because of force of circumstance. Her yearning to assume women’s conventional roles was de Vaux’s as well. Lucie’s neighbor, Maurice, eventually falls in love with her. De Vaux used him to vent her anger. Lashing out at the law that binds her to her hateful husband, Maurice, a “liberal,” calls Lucie a “beautiful martyr of social injustices.” He denounces the “apathy of men,” which generates such “unhappiness and oppression.” Maurice then abruptly ponders, Why does one see common women fascinate superior intellects and become the object of a true cult? How does it also happen that the generosity and nobility of certain women are so often seen battling egoism and coarseness? 121

122

Comte had also given her “the first two volumes of Sterne,” but it is not clear which work by the English novelist he lent her. Some of his books are composed of letters. See “Liste des livres figurant dans la biblioth`eque d’Auguste Comte a` son d´ec`es et prˆet´es par celui-ci a` Clotilde de Vaux,” MAC. The Sterne book is missing from Comte’s library today. “Lucie,” CG, 3:427–8.

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Not flowing naturally from the text, these questions reflect the extent to which de Vaux was disturbed by Comte’s crude worship of her. Nevertheless, she used the image of women’s moral superiority to advance the story. Dressed in white, which highlights her moral purity, Lucie is an “angelic woman,” who inspires “generous and elevated sentiments.”123 To de Vaux and to many of her female contemporaries, women’s supposed generosity and elevation were sources of empowerment. Lucie’s moral superiority, for example, drives Maurice to petition the government to change the unjust law prohibiting divorce. Women could not step into the public sphere to change laws affecting their own condition. De Vaux is reflecting political realities. After divorce bills were rejected by the Chambre des Paris in 1831–4, a petition was presented in 1836, but to no avail. Divorce was associated with the excesses of the Revolution, which had legalized it in 1792. Given that it was still a taboo subject, as reflected in Lamennais’s refusal to entertain talk of it in his periodical, de Vaux was bold to bring it up.124 Maurice and Lucie soon become lovers. But Maurice, like Comte, gradually wants to imprison Lucie in his view of what a woman should be. He objects to her copying music to earn money: Is not women’s true role to give to man the care and pleasures of the domestic sphere, and to receive from him in exchange all the means of existence procured by this work? I prefer to see a poor mother . . . wash the laundry of her children rather than see her fritter away her life in spreading the products of her intelligence outside [the home].

Maurice defends the traditional ideology of the separation of spheres, which denied women any economic rights, stressed their dependence on men, and belittled their minds.125 Yet at the same time he claims it is acceptable for an eminent woman to be “pushed outside the family sphere by her genius” in order to be able to find fulfillment in society.126 His inconsistency on the matter of woman’s proper behavior suggests that de Vaux was searching for a loophole in the ideology of the separation of spheres to allow exceptionally intelligent women to excel. With the model of George Sand in her mind, she was ruminating over the possibility of including herself among the 123 124 125

126

“Lucie,” CG, 3:428–31. Alison Finch, Women’s Writing in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 157–9. “Lucie,” CG, 3:435. De Vaux showed herself to be her mother’s daughter when she suggested that unfortunate women who were not supported by men (i.e., husbands, fathers, or brothers) should be helped by government-funded establishments, where they could work on objects that demanded feminine skills. Ibid., 435.

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women geniuses so that she would not feel obliged to repress her spirit and defer modestly to great men like Comte. Yet projecting her own ambivalence onto her protagonist, de Vaux made Lucie hesitant to question society. The fear of challenging “respectable” social institutions prevents Lucie from yielding at first to Maurice’s advances. Moreover, Lucie keeps her distance from the movement in favor of women’s political and economic rights, which she considers ridiculous. However, she admits, almost in spite of herself, that she is proud to play the part of a “true heroine,” fighting “against oppression where it is real.” To justify her rebellious feelings, she writes, “Laws undermine the . . . happiness of woman by pushing her out of her sphere and making her sometimes ignore her sublime destiny [of marriage and motherhood].”127 It is not her fault but society’s that she is unable to assume the role of wife and mother. In the end, Lucie dies abruptly of an illness born from sorrow after her husband is captured and she realizes she must put an end to her affair. Maurice, in a theatrical move, then shoots himself. De Vaux’s story reflects the complexity of the “woman question” of the day. The main problem, which had been at the center of public discussion since the Saint-Simonians and Charles Fourier helped revive feminist demands in the 1830s, was the nature of woman’s proper role in society. De Vaux shared Lucie’s desire to be an intellectual, self-sufficient, accomplished woman. Like George Sand, she wanted the freedom to wander unescorted through Paris and enjoy the sense of being “an abandoned woman.”128 But she also shared Lucie’s second desire, her longing to be a wife and mother. The tragedy was that society would not let her construct multiple selves along these diverse lines. It was not possible for a woman to achieve intellectual and emotional satisfaction simultaneously. Denouncing the “disorder” in society, de Vaux expressed her frustration through her various characters but was loath to challenge society and lose men’s respect. Above all, she did not want to resemble her feminist contemporaries, who foolishly “stamp their feet at the idea of never being a deputy and ride a horse to demonstrate that they would be . . . excellent colonels.” Unable to offer a solution to the oppression of women, de Vaux ended the story on a tragic, pessimistic note, pointing out that man has little power “to repair the evil he produces.” Here there is a telling silence on the issue of women’s response to mistreatment; what de Vaux would have liked to have said but felt she could not was that woman has no power to eliminate the injustice created by man. After witnessing Lucie’s death, a doctor in the story comments, “No woman felt more profoundly than she the grandeur of her role.” Lucie displays “grandeur” in courageously playing the 127

Ibid., 432, 433.

128

De Vaux to Comte, October 30, 1845, CG, 3:169.

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“victim” of social injustice in this melodrama. However, dying from weakness caused by depression, she could not be considered heroic because she did not overcome or even alter her situation.129 De Vaux was too conventional to allow her heroine to defy social norms completely. Perhaps de Vaux also feared that if she took a more radical stance, Marrast would refuse to give her story a prominent front-page position. As a result, she did not allow her heroine any alternative but death. It is paradoxical that de Vaux sought to profit from this tragic tale to become a recognized writer and thus avoid the same fate. Comte was so moved by “Lucie” that he cried. What impressed him – and moved him to tears – was de Vaux’s depiction of “the true social condition of women.”130 According to his interpretation, de Vaux was presenting the case for “the true emancipation” of her “sex” – an emancipation from the cares of work.131 Although less than three weeks before he had spoken out strongly against divorce, he now boasted of the relativistic strain in positivism that would enable him to make an exception and allow it in de Vaux and Lucie’s case.132 Yet he did not go further to alter the status quo. Overlooking Lucie’s conflicts, he was convinced that de Vaux was following the conservative principles of the Cours that supported marriage against the “deadly aberrations” of social reformers, who took their idea of female equality from Plato and other Greek metaphysicians.133 When Comte later appended “Lucie” to the dedication that he wrote to de Vaux in the first volume of the Syst`eme, he praised her “defense of the inviolable laws of elementary sociability,” which preserved the family. The most beautiful phrase in the story, according to him, was “It is unworthy for people with big hearts to spread the trouble they feel.”134 Thus Comte was attracted to her depiction of woman as a passive victim. Yet when he felt victimized, such as during his fights against the Academy of Science and the Ecole Polytechnique, he did not hesitate to lash out against the scientific establishment and spread trouble, especially in the “Personal Preface” to volume six of the Cours. It was only during the third reading of the story that it dawned on Comte that de Vaux was projecting her own sadness onto Lucie. Yet his interpretation was somewhat off the mark because he believed 129 130 131 132

133 134

Clotilde de Vaux, “Lucie,” CG, 3: 433, 437, 438. Comte to de Vaux, June 25, 1845, CG, 3:43. Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:95. Comte to de Vaux, June 6 and 23, 1845, CG, 3:38, 41–2. However, the republicans at Le National, seeking to make divorce an important political issue, criticized her for treating it in such a cursory manner. Comte to de Vaux, June 23, 1845, CG, 3:40; de Vaux to Comte, June 23, 1845, CG, 3:41; de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 178. Comte to de Vaux, June 25, 1845, CG, 3:43. Syst`eme, 1:xii. See also “Lucie” in CG, 3:432.

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that de Vaux was secretly describing her love for him. Calling her his “very dear Lucie,” he vowed to rival Maurice’s devotion. If one day I become free again, I am determined never to take any other wife but you, unless you do not accept me and I must remain alone. My heart sees . . . in you in reality a true friend, and, in my dreams of the future, a worthy wife.

In both cases, he promised to be pure, that is, chaste. De Vaux rejected his reading of her text. Emboldened by her success, she demanded that Comte respect her work. She wrote back angrily, “It is absolutely impossible for me to understand you. . . . Nothing is mysterious in my situation, and I have nothing more to confide [to you] than what I have told you.” She begged him once again to respect her commitment to her work. She had one “ambition” for the present and future, which consisted of making money by writing “interesting” stories.135 Thus once again, de Vaux tried to be strong in the face of Comte’s assaults. She had to prop up her ego in order to combat his, for she wanted to take control over her life and create her own story. Yet she did not wish to alienate him permanently; lacking other friends, especially female writer friends who might have bolstered her morale, and angry with her family for trying to limit her intellectually, she needed his support.136 By July 1845, Comte increased his visits to the Marie household from two to three times a week, yet he soon realized that he was becoming a nuisance. De Vaux took up his suggestion that he come by only on Mondays and Fridays. Carefully not committing herself, she promised to try to visit him in his apartment once a week. She warned him in advance not to visit her. Refusing to allow people to her apartment, she explained that she treasured her time alone. She unknowingly challenged the separation between spheres that emerged when work was no longer done in the house; she wrote, “I reserve my home for my workshop.”137 Foreshadowing the demands of such female literary figures as Virginia Woolf, she wanted, in other words, “a room of her own.” She called what she did at home her work in order to give value and meaning to her life. But Comte made light of her demand for independence; he insisted that he be allowed to see her “sanctuary,” a metaphor for her body.138 De Vaux was well aware of Comte’s physical desire for her; in one of her stories, a man 135 136 137 138

De Vaux to Comte, July 3, 1845, CG, 3:54–5; October 7, 1845, CG, 3:145. See also de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 177. On the importance of a female network at this time, see Finch, Women’s Writing, 17–18. De Vaux to Comte, July 19, 1845, CG, 3:68. See also de Vaux to Comte, July 20, 1845, CG, 3:70. De Vaux to Comte, July 3, 19, 1845, CG, 3:55, 68; Comte to de Vaux, July 20, 1845, CG, 3:69.

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intrudes upon a woman in her “sanctuary” and talks her into having sex with him.139 Trying to keep their relationship on a different plane, de Vaux surprised Comte when she told him that Marrast had offered her the opportunity to write a weekly column for Le National. She was to discuss issues relating to education, particularly women’s education. This topic was important in the mid-nineteenth century, when many women were demanding the right to a better education as the first step to improving their condition and achieving sexual equality.140 Marrast’s job offers also reflects the fact that there were more women journalists as the number of female readers of magazines began to soar. Delphine Gay de Girardin, for example, wrote for La Presse, her husband’s newspaper.141 De Vaux decided to devote her first article to the “silliness and vices of religious education” – an article motivated by her own memory of the “abuses” she suffered as a student. Reflecting the growing importance of women writers, she was also assigned the task of reviewing their novels. She was delighted to have the chance not only to earn her living but to do meaningful work that allowed her to display her abilities. She yearned for fame, which would allow her to escape the “rut” in which she was stuck.142 De Vaux’s good fortune did not, however, please Comte. The battle between them now extended from their bodies to their minds, or psyches. De Vaux shared her contemporaries’ unease with accomplished women. On one hand, she boasted about not being flighty or flirtatious like other women, but on the other hand, she took pride in the fact that she had never been initiated into the “marvels of the square of the hypotenuse.” She deeply feared being called a pedant. Comte reinforced her insecurities to dissuade her from working at Le National. He warned her that the profession of journalism exerted a “disastrous influence,” for it would make her even more skeptical and critical than she already was.143 She risked turning into a femme auteur, who was linked in his mind to feminist demands for freedom and equality, domestic chaos, and political and social upheaval.144 Moreover, he argued that due to the “deplorable fecundity of our women writers,” de Vaux would have too much work to do. In other words, her writing would distract her from him. Emancipated women, such as the bluestockings, seemed to him unemotional and 139 140 141 142 143 144

Clotilde de Vaux, Willelmine (Paris: Edition positiviste, 1929), 7. James F. McMillan, Housewife or Harlot: The Place of Women in French Society 1870–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 46. Finch, Women’s Writing, 130–31. De Vaux to Comte, July 20, October 16, 1845, CG, 3:69, 154. De Vaux to Comte, October 30, 1845, CG, 3:169; Comte to de Vaux, July 22, 1845, CG, 3:70. Bergman-Carton, The Woman of Ideas, 53, 87.

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thus unfeminine. If Vaux became the reviewer of their books, she risked becoming “exposed to the cajoleries and animosities of the blue race [bluestockings]” and might pattern her own life after theirs. The unspoken evil in Comte’s diatribe was George Sand. She threatened Comte, who feared de Vaux might become impure by imitating her. Comte may have considered Sand’s love affairs scandalous, but ironically, he himself wanted sexual relations with de Vaux, which by his own standards were illicit. There was also a tinge of jealousy in Comte’s deprecating response, for success had recently eluded him, particularly in the field in which she was excelling. He had failed both to launch a positivist review and to publish his “Lettre philosophique sur la commemoration social” in Le National, the same newspaper that was printing her material. Railing against her appointment as quasi-minister of education, a job that “does not at all suit a woman,” Comte worried that if de Vaux wrote on the school system, which was a major, politically divisive issue, she would take on a public persona. Perhaps he felt slighted that he was not offered the job, for he suggested that he knew a great deal more about the topic than she and even planned to write a book on education once he finished the Syst`eme. Now she would wield more influence through her pen than he did. Moreover, his considerable displeasure at de Vaux’s being given the “entire feminine critique of Le National” betrays his fear that she might convert to the women’s movement, which posed a danger to positivism by taking away potential supporters.145 Another source of irritation was Marrast’s power over de Vaux. Comte and Marrast had been good friends in the 1830s. It was Marrast, in fact, who brought Comte and Mill together. Yet the two men had become increasingly estranged. Marrast was more to the left politically, and he supported Arago and the left-leaning professors at the Ecole Polytechnique whom Comte accused of persecuting him. Moreover, Comte suspected Marrast of having made advances to his wife. Indeed, once again he and Marrast were sexual rivals. A handsome man with a dashing moustache and dandy-style clothes, Marrast, according to Charles de Rouvre, was the man with whom de Vaux had been in love for the past two years. She had met him through her brother Max, who was active in the circle of left-wing journalists.146 145

146

Comte to de Vaux, July 22, 1845 and January 29, 1846, CG 3: 70, 72, 74, 308. On the growing popularity of journalism among women writers, see Smith, Changing Lives, 210. On the association between the private and the feminine, see Gary Kelly, Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790–1827 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 10. In 1843, Max worked for La R´eforme, a left-wing journal founded by, among others, Godefroy Cavaignac, who was one of Marrast’s republican colleagues. As a new recruit to the anti-government movement, Max was introduced to Marrast, and the two men

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But Marrast, who was married to an English woman, did not pay her much heed until he learned of Comte’s interest in her and decided to spite him. De Vaux was in a quandary as to what she should do; she opposed adultery and Marrast’s unchivalrous maneuvers, yet she needed him to help her achieve literary success. Her case was typical of many women of the time. Once they began to seek freedom in the public sphere, men assumed they wanted sexual freedom as well. Some men wanted them to prostitute themselves, in effect, to degrade themselves, to achieve their goal. De Vaux’s refusal to go to bed with Marrast when he came to her apartment to discuss “Lucie” may have been one reason that he denied her request to publish Comte’s “Sainte-Clotilde.” Having punished both de Vaux and Comte on that score, he now offered her the job of covering women’s issues for Le National in another attempt to possess her. Perhaps surmising the true intent of Marrast’s ploy, Comte tried to discredit him by calling him untalented, weak, frivolous, and emotionally superficial.147 De Vaux dismissed Comte’s derogatory remarks and immediately set to work on her first article. Comte suffered a relapse in late July and once again delayed beginning the Syst`eme. a new clo se ne ss betwe e n de vaux and comte Trying to find the courage to write his introduction, Comte sent an important letter to de Vaux on August 5 to express his “eternal gratitude” for the “permanent” mark she had left on his work. This letter extended his reflections of mid-May and was supplemented by another letter in October, all of which underscored her role in his life. To give her an idea of her impact, these letters provided her with an autobiographical portrait, which reveals that he was reconstructing his own “philosophic evolution” and struggling to put his second work on the same level of importance as his first. Comte explained that in his youth, he had thought the spiritual reorganization of society was one operation. Soon he realized that it comprised two parts, one relating to the reorganization of ideas and the other involving the reorganization of feelings. Thus his own development had to be divided into “two great epochs.” The first was primarily “mental, where the social point of view” dominated “only as the principal source” of the intellectual systematization. The second was principally “social” and

147

became friends. De Rouvre heard this piece of information about Marrast and Clotilde de Vaux from his grandmother, F´elicie. Th´erive doubted the story. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 161–3; Th´erive, Clotilde de Vaux, 106–9. Comte to de Vaux, July 22, 1845, CG 3:71.

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consisted of reconstructing “the moral life of Humanity” based on the doctrine established in the first epoch.148 In this second part, feelings would play as important a role as intelligence. The reconstruction of human actions, that is, political and institutional reform, would come later. The sequence of developments was important, because systematizing feelings before ideas would have led to mysticism, vagueness, and anarchy. Comte suggested to Mill that his understanding of his mission was new, for he had not previously recognized the need for the nineteenth century to systematize both ideas and sentiments.149 But in truth, he attributed much influence to de Vaux in order to dramatize her impact on him. Even he admitted in his letter to her that he was finally returning to the incomplete work of his youth, where he had tried prematurely to effect the spiritual, or moral, reorganization of modern societies, which he had hoped would lead to the reconstruction of their political systems. He had abandoned his efforts because he decided, before ever meeting de Vaux, that reconstruction had to be first intellectual, then moral, and finally political and social.150 Thus in a sense, the path of his evolution was more a circular return than a linear progression. He had always believed that the second part of his mission would involve the moral aspects of social regeneration. Despite giving her the sense that he had experienced a significant revelation, Comte also acknowledged to de Vaux that he had always thought emotions were important. In truth, already in 1818, in a letter to Valat, Comte had commended Destutt de Tracy for pointing out that “tender affections” are “the source of the greatest happiness.”151 Increasing the “general happiness” was the goal of both morality and politics, which should no longer be considered distinct.152 The importance of the affections and morality was later proclaimed throughout the last lessons of the Cours. These last chapters as well as the events of 1842, particularly the writing of the personal preface and the experience of the trial, had shown that Comte was thoroughly convinced that the superiority of positivism was not only intellectual but moral. One of the most salient statements at the end of the Cours was his declaration that “true philosophers” had to present an example of the moral attributes of positivism, for they were the “natural precursors of humanity.”153 Comte’s evolution was marked, therefore, more by the continuity between the two great epochs in his life than by any abrupt break. 148 149 151 152 153

Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:78, 80. Comte to Mill, July 14, 1845, CG, 3:60–61. 150 Syst`eme, vol. 4, “Appendice,” 80. Comte to Valat, May 15, 1818, CG, 1:33. Auguste Comte, “De la Division qui a exist´e jusqu’`a pr´esent entre la morale et la politique (1819),” Ecrits, 471. Cours, 2:779.

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But as a vibrant individual, he continued to develop and needed to feel he was in a constant process of evolution so that his ideas did not seem stagnant. Comte presented his private life as divided into two parts, coinciding with the two parts of his philosophical career. The first part of his private life was marked by “emotional lacunae” due to his unfulfilling domestic existence.154 But this want did not much affect his public life because his work at that time was primarily intellectual. However, now that his work was to focus on morality and involve the heart more than the mind, he felt it required emotional growth – the kind of emotional growth that de Vaux was conveniently giving him. He believed that her love was making him a better person. He was “more just” toward everyone, including his “inferiors” and his “enemies.”155 For the first time, his “personal affections” were improving his “social activity,” and his “private life” was in harmony with his “public life.”156 As mentioned before, he more fully realized that the domestic sphere was not completely separate from the public sphere. Thus de Vaux was important for improving his work, developing his personal happiness, and making his behavior more moral. Indeed, he made her into a paragon of morality, a perfect woman to reflect his own worth. Comte was, in truth, using her. “After having already conceived all human ideas, it now is necessary for me to experience also all sentiments, even those which are painful: this is a . . . condition [that is] naturally prescribed to all the regenerators of Humanity.” He could then develop “the moral grandeur of man in every sense.”157 As revealed in his fights over her literary career, Comte did not appreciate de Vaux as an individual with hopes and aspirations of her own. She existed only in so far as she played the role he had sketched for her in his own personal drama. And this role had been set long before he met her, for in the Cours he had already referred to the need for women to help the spiritual power.158 Comte used remarkably religious language to express his feelings of devotion to this muse who sparked his “best inspirations” and was the foundation of his “security.” As early as August 26, he called the red chair she used when she first visited him an “altar,” and he would often kneel down in front of it, reliving the significant moments in their relationship.159 When far from her, he wished he could prostrate himself before her and cry “tears of gratitude and joy” at her feet as 154 155 156 159

Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:81–2. Comte to de Vaux, October 8, 1845, CG, 3: 146. Comte to de Vaux, August 5, 1845, CG, 3:78–9. 157 Ibid., 84. 158 Cours, 2:300. Comte to de Vaux, August 26, September 5, 1845, CG, 3:95, 107. See also Testament (1896 ed.), 19. The chair still exists in Comte’s apartment, which has been made into a museum. It is located on 10, rue Monsieur le Prince.

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if she were a goddess.160 With her “divine ascendancy” over him, she was responsible for his “moral resurrection,” for he had to rid himself of all evil to be worthy of her love.161 Thanks to her, he had experienced “all that there is of most pure and most profound in human sentiments.”162 Comte was soon pleased to discover that de Vaux needed him, at least monetarily. She had a mounting pile of bills from her pharmacy and doctor, which she could not pay because she had spent all of her uncle’s money. Not wanting to look impoverished, she also had to have a new dress to wear to the baptism of Max and F´elicie’s new baby. On August 11, she coyly asked Comte for a loan, cleverly using religious language. I do not really know whether or not I am making you play a little the role of God toward me; but I believe you are so sensitive and good that I am going to ask you to do me a little favor as an intimate friend. I am undergoing a costly treatment which makes things a little tight for me but will probably be valuable; could you lend me fifty francs for several weeks, [for] they will help me make a name for myself at Le National.163

Carefully emphasizing her poor health and desire for a successful career instead of referring to her sartorial longings, de Vaux shamelessly flattered Comte to get him to help her. Such flattery went a long way with him. Although he had lost his main position at the Ecole Polytechnique and he knew that his English patrons were not eager to renew their subsidy in September, he obligingly told her to regard his “purse” as hers.164 If he began to have problems, he assumed he could go back to teaching in another capacity or find wealthy, powerful supporters. Questions of money were beneath his dignity. This insouciance was not shared by de Vaux, who depended entirely on family members for her daily existence and had not developed a network of friends or skills that she could fall back on in case of need. Her request for money from Comte proved compromising. Comte recognized that his economic power gave him more control over her than his intellectual superiority. At least if she was financially indebted to him, he had the right to see her. He demanded that she not tell her parents about his loans so they would not come up with the money. He wanted her all to himself. She was outraged but could 160 161 162 163 164

Comte to de Vaux, August 26, 1845, CG, 3:95. Comte to de Vaux, November 16, 1845, CG, 3:197; Comte to de Vaux, October 29, 1845, CG, 3:167. Comte to de Vaux, December 7, 1845, CG, 3:223. De Vaux to Comte, August 11, 1845, CG, 3:91. See also de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 196–8. Comte to de Vaux, September 26, 1845, CG, 3:136.

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do nothing. Her lack of resources almost forced her to prostitute herself to him in order to save her life and self-esteem. She was not, however, the first woman to come to him with needs dictated by society’s unequal treatment of women. According to his statement in his Testament, which was published after his death, he had agreed to marry Massin, who had been abandoned by her family, because she felt obliged to turn to prostitution to support herself. This story may not be true. However, it reveals at the very least his penchant for representing himself as a savior of women in need. Control was of key importance to him. In early June, F´elicie, Max’s wife, had given birth to a son. Comte was given the “sacred engagement” to be his godfather and immediately tried to impose his own set of names on the child – names that would refer to models of behavior.165 Comte recommended three names: Paul, Charles, and Auguste. These names were significant, for they reflected his view of his own mission. Paul was Saint Paul, the apostle whom Comte considered the true founder of Christianity. Charles referred to Charlemagne, whom Comte called the “historical founder of the Western republic.”166 And Auguste was Comte himself. He would be the man who would complete the work of Paul and Charlemagne. Positivism would not, therefore, represent a break with the past. Max and his wife took Comte’s suggestions seriously and named their son Charles-Paul-Auguste-Maximilien-L´eon Marie. L´eon, which became the baby’s everyday name, was a reference to Max and Clotilde’s brother.167 The baptism of little L´eon gave Comte the opportunity to fulfill his “need for domestic emotions.”168 Besides being pleased to pretend he was a father and choose names for an offspring, Comte was enraptured to have the chance to play another role, that of the husband. Because de Vaux was to be the godmother, he imagined that the baptismal ceremony was a substitute for the marriage rite they could never have. It somehow linked them in a mystical union, where she would be his “spiritual wife.”169 And little L´eon would become the child they could not have.170 As Comte explained to F´elicie in his “Lettre philosophique sur l’appr´eciation sociale du baptˆeme chr´etien,” which he sent to her 165 167

168 169 170

Comte to de Vaux, June 25, 1845, CG, 3:42. 166 Syst`eme, 1:386. L´eon became an artillery officer and eventually died in an expedition in Tonkin around 1885. F´elict´e and Max had two other sons. The second died very early. The youngest, who became a captain in the artillery, died in 1884 at the age of thirty-two in a dispute over a woman. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 202–3; Arnaud, CG, 3:393, note CCXCI; baptismal certificate of L´eon Marie, MAC. The certificate was in the MAC in the early 1980s, but in 2007 it was misplaced. Comte to de Vaux, June 25, 1845, CG, 3:42–3. Comte to de Vaux, September 2, 1845, CG, 3:102. Comte to de Vaux, June 25, 1845, CG, 3:43.

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in late August, this baptism would make his friendship with de Vaux “more intimate and sacred.”171 Comte’s language alarmed the Marie family, who received him with marked coldness during his next visit. De Vaux scolded him, suggesting that “every sentiment”– even “the most pure”–hides a fundamental egoism.172 Comte found her warning incomprehensible. But she seemed to understand that she was becoming a pawn in a war between her family and Comte, both of whom wanted her for themselves. Limiting Comte’s visits to Fridays, Clotilde chose to be loyal to her mother. Their relationship was a loving, but difficult one because Henriette was a rigid, austere individual.173 De Vaux portrayed some of the sources of tension in their relationship in her short story, where she has Maurice’s mother at first object to his love for Lucie because it went against “duty” and “honor,” aristocratic values that were held by Henriette as well. De Vaux knew that the declaration of these values was at least partly self-serving. She had Maurice write to a friend, “For the first time, I glimpsed what was bitter and implacable in feminine rivalries.”174 The issue was not so much social prejudice but the fact that Maurice’s mother was jealous of the passion between the younger couple. Likewise, Henriette was fearful of losing de Vaux to Comte. Having been initially closer to Comte than de Vaux had been, she was perhaps resentful that he found her daughter more appealing. Clotilde was aware of the unspoken in their relationship. Reflecting the fact that she felt stifled by her mother’s love and desire to retain power over her, she told Comte, “My mother has concentrated her tenderness and devotion too much on us not to fear that we will escape from her in some way. My situation has only increased her tendency in this direction; and although it makes me often unhappy, I respect it by going back to its source.”175 She seemed resigned to her mother’s possessiveness. Comte, showing that he was just as possessive, railed against Henriette’s “affectionate empire.” He worried that she would win the battle and deter de Vaux from visiting him. Although de Vaux had promised six weeks before to visit him once a week on Wednesdays, she had come only twice. And one of those visits was to get the fifty francs Comte promised to lend to her. Comte begged her to visit him more often, for their conversations were “indispensable” to his “heart.”176 On Wednesday, September 3, the baptismal ceremony took place in a chapel of the Church of St. Paul on rue Saint-Antoine in the Marais. 171 172 173 175 176

“Lettre philosophique sur l’appr´eciation sociale du baptˆeme chr´etien,” CG, 3:100. De Vaux to Comte, September 1, 1845, CG, 3:101. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 2. 174 “Lucie,” 430. De Vaux to Comte, September 2, 1845, CG, 3:103. Comte to de Vaux, September 2, 1845, CG, 3:104–5.

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Comte spent 215 francs on transportation, clothes, and gifts, including a glove box for Vaux, which would one day contain their correspondence.177 Comte initially believed the ceremony represented the happy culmination of his relationship with the Marie family, but in truth it marked the beginning of the decline of their friendship.178 Imagining that the baptism served as his marriage ceremony, Comte held de Vaux’s hand throughout the ceremony, then kissed her cheek. De Vaux likewise gave Comte a kiss. Comte, always ready to find symbolic meaning in her every gesture, took her “holy kiss” to be a sign of his triumph over her family and over her own scruples. He smugly remarked that it sealed their “happy spiritual wedding” in front of her entire family.179 At the end of the festive champagne dinner afterwards, he gave her yet another kiss. De Vaux had not much choice in the matter because of her desperate need for money.180 Henriette began to worry more about her daughter’s relationship with this man. Sensing the tension with de Vaux’s mother and aware that his visits were henceforth strictly limited to Fridays, Comte began to fear that “the most precious bond” of his “moral existence” was about to be cut off. His physical and mental health, which had slightly improved since early August, once again deteriorated; he was disturbed by convulsions, “insomnia,” and a “profound melancholy,” which were the same symptoms he experienced in May.181 His problems were aggravated by his acute financial troubles and the mental strain caused by working on the first volume of the Syst`eme, which he started in August and hoped to complete by November.182 After finishing on August 26 the “interesting” introduction, where he stressed that affective life was “the center of all human existence” and that love was socially supreme over force and intelligence, he was disheartened by his plan for the rest of the first volume, which was to treat solely logic.183 177

178 179 180 181 182

183

Comte bought for the Maries a silver coffee pot for one hundred francs as a gift. See “Baptˆeme: Rel`eve des d´epenses du baptˆeme du filleul d’Auguste Comte,” August 28. 1845, MAC; no author, “Achats et reparations d’objets et de meubles,” MAC. This list appears to be pulled from Comte’s notebooks of expenses for every year, which are in the archives of the MAC. See notebook entitled “Recettes et d´epenses courantes,” MAC. See also Testament (1896 ed.), 15n1. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 203. Comte to de Vaux, September 5, 1845, CG, 3:106. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 203. Comte to de Vaux, September 5, 1845, CG, 3:106. Comte to Mill, August 8, 1845, CG, 3:88. Comte did not start writing until August 18, 1845. See his records of his work, in Pierre Laffitte, ed., “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” RO 6 (November 1888): 442. Comte to de Vaux, September 14, 1845, CG, 3:126; Comte to de Vaux, August 26, 1845, CG, 3:97.

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While infatuated with de Vaux, he found it impossible to write a dry volume where his “affections” could not “aid” his thoughts.184 the problem of sex De Vaux, too, felt great inner turmoil after the baptism, for it made her acutely aware of the fact that she herself would never have a child. She asked Comte for his help. “Since my bad fortune, my only dream has been maternity, and I have always promised myself to associate in this role only a distinguished man, one who was worthy enough to understand it. If you believe you can accept all the responsibilities that are attached to family life, tell me, and I will decide my fate.”185 Just as he was using her, she decided to exploit him. She needed not only his money but his procreative power. Perhaps she wanted a sexual relationship as well. All this talk about maternity was a way to make her own sexual urges more ennobling and ladylike.186 Reading the “divine letter” on his knees before the “domestic altar” (her red chair), Comte was stupified.187 He praised sex as the “most extreme,” “natural,” and “irrevocable” guarantee of their commitment to each other.188 A close reading of their correspondence reveals that neither de Vaux nor Comte felt comfortable about adultery. Going against his own precepts, Comte rationalized that he and de Vaux had “morally exceptional rights” to go against the “sacred” rules of society and that marriage ceremonies were “really indispensable” only for the masses. Because he was constructing a humanistic philosophy, he needed to feel even vulgar drives to deepen his understanding of everyman. Nevertheless, he revealed his unease when he ordered de Vaux never to discuss their affair in public. De Vaux also had second thoughts. The impropriety of an affair might estrange her from her family, upon whom she depended completely for financial support. She was not at all attracted to Comte, who was old, poor, and sick. While Comte in his letters sometimes referred to her as “my adorable wife,” she could bring herself to write only “my tender old man [p`ere].”189 De Vaux arrived at Comte’s apartment on September 7, still perplexed as to the best course of action. Comte made every effort not to throw himself upon her. After a few moments, she recognized her 184 185 186 187 188 189

Comte to de Vaux, September 14, 1845, CG, 3:126. De Vaux to Comte, September 5, 1845, CG, 3:108. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 216. Comte to de Vaux, September 6, 1845, CG, 3:109; Testament (1896 ed.), 19. Comte to de Vaux, September 6, 1845, CG, 3:109; Comte to de Vaux, September 8, 1845, CG, 3:112. De Vaux to Comte, September 6, 1845, CG, 3:109–10, 112.

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imprudence; she knew she was “incapable of giving” herself “without love.” Her overwhelming desire for children suddenly disappeared. Telling Comte she would see him only at her mother’s apartment, she walked out. She warned him not “to abuse the power” that she had given him. Furious and in a state of collapse, Comte felt victimized by her power, the power she had over her body: “What! Friday you spontaneously made me the unforeseen promise of imminent happiness, Saturday you confirmed it, Sunday, you avoided it, and Monday, you took it back! Aren’t you abusing a little the feminine privilege?” He had paid for this pleasure by lending her money. In a letter to her, he renewed his demands for sex, the “sacred seal” of their closeness. De Vaux accused him of planning to rape her: If you constrained me, by whatever means possible, to yield to you on this point in question, I would never see you again. You do not know to what degree of exasperation violence of this type would push me; a woman who has been continent for a long time can give herself [to a man] only with enthusiasm or the resolution to become a mother.

Reminding him to treat her as a mature woman instead of a “little girl,” she added, sarcastically, “I know myself better than the leading scholar of the world.”190 De Vaux was not moved by the rhetoric of Comte’s arguments. All his talk about his “rights” or “sacrifices” was nonsense, for such ideas were “illusory.” Moreover, if, as he claimed, he found continence harmful, he should use his “manly powers” to control himself or find some other outlet besides her.191 De Vaux’s rejection of his advances caused him to experience another collapse, which sent him to bed. In the romantic language of the period, he wrote, “Almost insensitive to reversals of fortune, and even to wounds to my self-esteem, I feel very weak against all the pains of the heart.”192 To avoid straining his mind while his emotions were in turmoil, he immediately stopped working on the frustratingly dull first volume of the Syst`eme.193 De Vaux then gave Comte permission to visit her at her family’s again on Mondays and Fridays, indicating that she could not cut off her ties with him completely. In fact, she borrowed another fifty francs 190

191 192 193

De Vaux to Comte, September 8, 9, 1845, CG, 3:114, 116, 119–20; Comte to de Vaux, September 9, 1845, CG, 3:115, 116. See also his letter to her where he wants to see her as a “little girl.” Comte to de Vaux, October 10, 1845, CG, 3:149. De Vaux to Comte, September 9, 1845, CG, 3:119, 120. Comte to de Vaux, September 14, 1845, CG, 3:126. He stopped work on it on September 23, 1845. See Comte to de Vaux, September 10, 1845 and September 14, 1845, CG, 3:122, 126; Comte to Mme Marie, September 12, 1845, CG, 3:123. See also his records of his work, in Laffitte, ed., “Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” 442.

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from him around the time of this episode.194 Moreover, in intellectual matters, which were important to her, she felt “privileged” to know him: “I experience pleasure in being able to be myself from time to time, and I feel that when I am near you I can think on a more elevated plane.”195 In addition, he made her feel that her work was important to his own, which was crucial to the salvation of humanity. Both of them studied human nature but in a complementary fashion. Her novels focused on the emotions of private life, whereas his work embraced “the collective life of Humanity,” which had more to do with intellectual speculation and material activity.196 De Vaux also needed Comte’s moral support and advice. With her family trying to limit her success, she viewed Comte as her only confidant.197 It is not by chance that Comte lent her the M´emoires of Mme de Motteville, the confidant of Queen Anne of Austria.198 To encourage her writing, he also lent her books by Madame de Lafayette, Madame Roland, and even George Sand.199 As he became her only real friend, De Vaux did begin to feel some genuine affection for Comte. She said repeatedly that she found him “the best of men and the most just.” He made her “very happy.”200 In late September, she even boldly cut off a lock of her hair at one of her visits to prove her gratitude for his attachment.201 It became part of his worship of her, for he placed it on the “altar” in front of which he prostrated himself every morning. Playing with his emotions, she must have known that such an act would raise his hopes once again for some bigger prize. On September 30, she flattered him by calling him a “perfect man” and asked him for another hundred francs.202 This large sum was, in a sense, his payment for her hair, which was in turn a substitute for her body. Although initially she had sought to keep gender out of their relationship, she now reminded him of her gendered self, engaging in a minor game of prostitution so that she could continue to work. De Vaux hated this game, but she was driven by her “need and love of independence.” Using the rhetoric of women’s rights activists, she astutely realized that she needed to write to gain financial independence, which represented the key to her personal “emancipation.” 194 195 196 197 199

200 201 202

De Vaux to Comte, September 25, 1845, CG, 3:135. De Vaux to Comte, February 12, 1846, CG, 3:318. Comte to de Vaux, September 16, 1845, CG, 3:130. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 222. 198 See Pierre Arnaud, CG, 3:401n315. The book by George Sand was volume fifteen – M´elanges – of the Oeuvres compl`etes of 1843. It contained Lettres a` Marcie. See “Liste des livres figurant dans la biblioth`eque d’Auguste Comte a` son d´ec`es et prˆet´es par celui-ci a` Clotilde de Vaux,” MAC. De Vaux to Comte, December 8, 1845, CG, 3:224. She first sent him a lock of her hair to cheer him up, but it never arrived. De Vaux to Comte, September 25, 1845, CG, 3:134. De Vaux to Comte, September 30, 1845, CG, 3:139; Comte to de Vaux, October 25, 1845, CG, 3:163.

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She yearned for freedom from her relatives and others like Marrast and Comte, who gave her favors in return for her dependence. Money would give her the power “to be able to say ‘I want.’”203 wille lmine Her hopes were partly dashed in early October. Marrast rescinded his offer to make her a columnist for Le National, after having read her trial articles and received her refusal to engage in a more intimate collaboration. Not a leftist like her publisher, she confronted the difficult task faced by all French journalists at the time, that of matching her style and outlook to the newspaper for which she worked while remaining true to her own opinions and thus maintaining her integrity.204 As a woman, she also had to struggle to preserve her honor in the complex world of sexual politics. Incensed by Marrast’s decision to dismiss her, she felt “malice” in his handshakes.205 Nevertheless, she hoped that he would print excerpts of Willelmine, the new novel which she was writing, and that these excerpts would attract a publisher. Then perhaps she could find a job as a journalist. The more she wrote, the more she developed “a taste for the profession.”206 Growing in self-confidence, de Vaux was bolder in Willelmine than in her previous work. She adopted a public authorial voice, dropping the epistolary form used in “Lucie.” Willelmine is the principal narrative voice and tells the tale in the first person. During the midnineteenth century, it was still relatively rare for a woman writer to displace the traditional male subject, to make her female character the center of the narrative, and to write an autobiographical novel.207 Yet, de Vaux had a desperate drive to succeed and tell her story. She knew that her perennial problems with poor health might cut short the time she had to achieve her goal. The book originated in her desire to challenge George Sand. In August, Comte had lent de Vaux Sand’s Lettres a` Marcie, which he, Blainville, and several other friends had discussed one evening in 1844.208 Although he admired Sand’s eloquence and talent, he had considered her a danger to society for years, and this book struck 203 204 205 206 207 208

De Vaux to Comte, July 3, October 7, November 11, 1845, CG, 3:55, 145, 186. William M. Reddy, “Condottieri of the Pen: Journalists and the Public Sphere in Postrevolutionary France (1815–1850),” American Historical Review 99 (1994): 1556. De Vaux to Comte, September 27, 1845, CG, 3:137. De Vaux to Comte, November 11, 1845, CG, 3:187. Susan Sniader Lanser, Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 175, 177. See letter from Barbot de Chement to Comte, December 19, 1844. Barbot de Chement was also at this soir´ee, which was held at Blainville’s apartment. Apparently, Blainville had read the book and pointed out its aesthetic merits. Comte read it afterwards.

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him as full of “dangerous paradoxes.”209 It was a compilation of the series of six articles, or “letters,” that Sand had contributed in 1837 to Lamennais’s journal, Le Monde, after he had requested her views on the “woman question.”210 Marcie, the fictional character, is an intelligent, beautiful, loving young woman, who fears that her poverty and lack of a dowry make it impossible for her to find a suitable spouse. Influenced by Saint-Simonianism, she wants a “male role in society” and lashes out at society for unjustly squelching her ambition.211 In response to her request for suggestions on how to deal with her loneliness and probable spinsterhood, a male friend addresses her these letters, giving her contradictory advice. On the one hand, he tells her it is better to stay celibate and become a writer than to enter a loveless marriage to a mediocre man who has the right to rule her.212 At other times, he advises her to wait for a suitable man to marry, although the possibility of such a man emerging was remote. It is difficult to ascertain Sand’s position on the “woman question” in the Lettres a` Marcie, especially because it is incomplete and shows the effects of Lamennais’s editing. (He cut out parts of letter three that criticized marriage.) When Lamennais refused to allow Sand to suggest the importance of separation and divorce in the seventh letter, she stopped the series with the sixth letter.213 Sand favored divorce by mutual consent but was most interested in fixing marriage to make divorce unnecessary.214 Francine Mallet explains, “Lettres a` Marcie aims to reinforce the autonomy of the married woman within marriage and guarantee her rights over her children.”215 Critical of gender relations in marriage and marital laws, Sand lashed out at men, who degraded women, especially by giving them a “deplorable education,” which ensured their inferiority.216 Sand seemed to argue that women should have the right to an education and the freedom to choose to pursue 209 210 211 212 213

214 215 216

Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4:55. See also for example his comments in the dedication to the Syst`eme, CG, 4:55. The six letters appeared between February 12 and March 27, 1837. Kristina Wing˚ard Vareille, Socialit´e, sexualit´e et les impasses de l’histoire: l’Evolution de la th´ematique sandienne d’Indiana (1832) a` Mauprat (1837) (Stockholm: Uppsala, 1987), 407. George Sand, Lettres a` Marcie, in Sand, Les Sept Cordes de la lyre (Paris: Michel L´evy Fr`eres, 1869), 173, 174. See also Vareille, Socialit´e, 407. The only “remedy for bloody injustices, ceaseless misery, and passions without any remedy which trouble the union of the sexes” is “the liberty to break and remake the conjugal union.” George Sand to Lamennais, February 28, 1837, in George Sand, Correspondance, ed. Georges Lubin, vol. 3 (Paris: Garnier Fr`eres, 1967), 711–14. For information on the discord between Sand and Lamennais, see Vareille, Socialit´e, 493–7; Joseph Barry, Infamous Woman: The Life of George Sand (Garden City, Doubleday, 1977), 223. Francine Mallet, George Sand (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1995), 125. Mallet, George Sand, 126. Sand, Lettres, 230. On Sand’s concept of education as leading to equality, see Vareille, Socialit´e, 374–80.

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a creative, fulfilling career and gain equality with men before the law. Yet as one critic put it, Sand was a “feminine reactionary,” for in her book she severely condemned adherents of the women’s rights movement (presumably the Saint-Simonian women) for being too aggressive in the public sphere and dismissive of the sanctity of marriage and motherhood. Women, Sand suggested, should at the moment be moderate, patient, and kind; they should courageously demand civil equality in marriage and the family, instead of militantly claiming their political rights, such as the right to vote, or the right to practice a profession. Their right to work was undeniable but would be attained later, once society was changed.217 Her position was indeed “paradoxical,” as a recent biographer put it.218 Comte gave de Vaux the book because he knew she would identify with Marcie, an unhappy intelligent woman struggling to succeed in the public sphere and unable to experience a true marriage and motherhood, which Sand considered essential to women’s fulfillment.219 Seeking to undermine de Vaux, he also wanted to underscore the dangers of devoting herself to a career. “True social principles” had to be defended against the “vulgar anarchical utopias” epitomized by Sand, who supported the socialism of her friend Pierre Leroux and had numerous love affairs.220 In early 1845, she had written a novel called Le P´ech´e de Monsieur Antoine, which expressed communist ideas.221 De Vaux, Comte proclaimed, could be “the woman destined to repair . . . the moral ravages resulting today from the deplorable use of a beautiful feminine talent.”222 Considering Sand a sexual libertine, de Vaux enjoyed reading Sand’s “eloquent refutation of herself,” especially on the issue of marriage. She took up Comte’s challenge and devoted herself to a story discrediting the idea of the independent, creative woman, toward which Sand had shown such “strange” ambivalence.223 Willelmine is a roman d’education. Willelmine, a repentant feminist, explains that she was originally taught to seek independence by her 217

218 219 220 221 222 223

Cate, George Sand, 419. See also Sand, Lettres a` Marcie, 230. On Sand’s feminism, see also Mallet, George Sand, 120–29; Naomi Schor, “Feminism and George Sand: Lettres a` Marcie,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), 41–53. Belinda Jack, George Sand: A Woman’s Life Writ Large (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 352. Mallet, George Sand, 126. Comte to de Vaux, Janaury 9, 1846, CG, 3:272. On her relationship with Leroux, see Mallet, George Sand, 117. Michelle Perrot, introduction to Politique et pol´emiques (1843–1850), by George Sand (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1997), 22. Comte to de Vaux, August 11, 1845, CG, 3:92. See also Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:42. De Vaux to Comte, August 7, 1845, CG, 3:86.

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widowed mother, who was reacting against the poor treatment she received from Willelmine’s father. As I grew up, . . . [my mother] spoke to me about the happiness that a woman can find in an exceptional destiny. She showed me the glory that I would enjoy in obtaining the instruction and insights that are prohibited to my sex. Soon she depicted men and marriage to me in an odious light.

Whereas Sand criticized the limited education that men permitted women to receive, de Vaux suggested that Willelmine’s extensive range of studies, including the sciences, had repressed her emotions and turned her against the “true role” of women. Continuing to relate her life’s story, Willelmine reveals that she eventually became a celebrated writer devoted to the cause of women’s independence – “the only truly noble and grand sentiment that there is in us.” Her works also displayed a sincere interest in the downtrodden. When not involved in social crusades, Willelmine led a self-indulgent, decadent life and caused a scandal wherever she went. In rebelling against society and adopting the roles of novelist and poet, Willelmine represented, in effect, George Sand herself, the kind of woman Marcie was considering becoming. De Vaux had Sand’s affair with Alfred de Musset in mind when she depicted Willelmine’s involvement with another famous writer, Raoul. Willelmine’s lover turned out to be a shallow opportunist. When Raoul completely abandoned Willelmine one day, leaving evidence that he sought to peddle her love letters, she went mad. She was rescued from her asylum by a wealthy, conservative man who brought her to live with his widowed sister and niece in the country, where she could convalesce. De Vaux never finished the book, but she intended to make Willelmine realize her errors. Willelmine would return to “the tranquility and full life of the family,” recognize the importance of the roles of wife and mother, and “accept social institutions with their good and bad points.” Willelmine would, in addition, eschew her previous intellectual proclivities and adopt the “philosophy of the heart,” one that connoted loving “humanity for itself, without fear of the boiling pot down below,” that is, the lower classes. In its stress on women’s dependence on men, their emotional nature, and their intrinsic “need for protection,” Willelmine thus represented a diatribe against the liberated woman and the concept of free love. It was, as de Vaux put it, a “useful” critique of Sand.224 Like Lucie, Willelmine cannot be considered great literature. With Willelmine fainting on almost every page, the book is far too melodramatic. It is clear that de Vaux was copying other romantic novelists besides George Sand. Willelmine referred to the “delicious and 224

De Vaux, Willelmine, 2, 4, 23, 25; de Vaux to Comte, August 11, and October 30, 1845, CG, 3:91, 169; de Vaux to Comte, October 30, 1845, CG, 3:169.

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terrible tears” that she shed in reading Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, and Werther’s suicide evidently inspired her own attempt to kill herself. Willelmine also announced that she shared the “tender and sad emotions” of Paul, who watched his sister die in Paul et Virginie.225 Similar in its pathos to Werther, the novel was written by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de St. Pierre, one of the most popular writers of the literature of sensibilit´e.226 Willelmine’s recounting of her life to Sax is in an eighteenth-century style and is similar to Rousseau’s Confessions.227 Besides its derivative character, another problem with the book is that neither Willelmine nor any of the other main characters are well-delineated or convincing. Moreover, there are too many other characters and incidents that detract from the narrative line. Finally, the theme of the dangers of challenging social mores is developed in a flat-footed manner. For example, de Vaux described Willelmine’s lover, Raoul, as barren and devoid of feeling because of his leftist political stance. Feminism, as embodied in Willelmine’s mother, is likewise associated with the denial of feelings and nature, especially the nature of women. To improve the manuscript, Comte gave de Vaux all sorts of advice, from choosing the name of the characters to making the narrative line more convincing.228 His influence is apparent in the section where Willelmine, having been sent to an asylum, found herself at the mercy of a deceitful, incompetent doctor and his cruel, overbearing “lackeys.”229 The depiction of the abhorrent medical treatment of mental illness resembles Comte’s own description of his days in a madhouse run by Esquirol in 1826. Comte also inspired de Vaux in more indirect ways. He was clearly the model for St´ephane Sax, the wise philosopher who in the beginning of the story rescued Willelmine from her suicide attempt and patiently listened to her woes.230 Comte was on de Vaux’s mind when she had one character extolling moral revolutions as the only ones that produce “real fruit.”231 Comte was very pleased by the novel and despite his previous efforts to dissuade de Vaux 225 226 227

228 229 230 231

De Vaux, Willelmine, 5. For information on Bernardin de St. Pierre, see Emmet Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 131–3. Maurice Wolff, Le Roman de Clotilde de Vaux et d’Auguste Comte suivi d’un choix de leurs lettres et du roman “Willelmine,” 3d ed. (Paris: Perrin, 1929), 201. In the M´elanges of Sand that Comte gave to de Vaux is a short article on Rousseau’s Confessions. See George Sand, “Quelques Reflexions sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Fragment d’une r´eponse a` un fragment de lettre,” Oeuvres de George Sand: M´elanges (Paris, 1843), 133–52. Perhaps Sand’s favorable words about Rousseau’s self-revelation influenced de Vaux. Comte to de Vaux, September 25, 1845, CG, 3:133–4; Document, Remarks of Comte on Willelmine, MAC. De Vaux, Willelmine, 21. The last name of St´ephane Sax is a veiled reference to Sand’s famous ancestor, the field marshal Maurice de Saxe. De Vaux, Willelmine, 30.

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from writing, he congratulated himself for having “encouraged” the project, which was sure to bring her success.232 Unlike Comte, Madame Marie was not happy with Willelmine. She and de Vaux became involved in their “first serious war.”233 As an aspiring writer herself, she felt threatened by her daughter’s potential literary success. She could not believe that de Vaux preferred Comte’s advice to her own. Most importantly, she objected to Clotilde’s depiction of Willelmine’s mother as a cold man-hater, who misled her daughter into challenging the status quo.234 De Vaux did seem to project into the story her ambivalence toward her overbearing mother. She was clearly affected by the example of her mother, who had followed the traditional route for women but at the same time indirectly expressed her dissatisfaction with it by writing about social issues. Indeed, her mother’s interest in the “social question” emerged in Willelmine’s sympathy for a beggar, who was unjustly imprisoned at one point in the story. Yet just as Willelmine struggled to understand her “stormy destiny” and questioned her mother, de Vaux was trying to find her own identity.235 Like her mother and Willelmine, de Vaux took up writing, but the point of her work was not yet clear. What is most interesting about the book is that de Vaux unconsciously refuted herself in the same fashion Sand had. She made Willelmine into a kind, intelligent woman and ridiculed those who equated “a bluestocking” with “a lioness or poisoner.” Willelmine herself was full of contradictions, condemning marriage at one moment but seeking to wed Raoul the next. Her confusion regarding the ideal of domesticity seemed to mirror de Vaux’s. Perhaps reflecting her own sympathy for Sand, whose life was constantly observed and deemed scandalous, de Vaux made fun of biographers who represented Willelmine as “a bizarre being, inclined since . . . youth to odious penchants” and to passionate romances with “young mountain shepherds.” One “generally esteemed” male character finally announced at one point in the novel that “liberty of thought” should “exist for women as [it does] for men” and that “we all push too far the love of privileges that excludes any rivalry between us and women.”236 There was in both Sand’s and de Vaux’s stories a tension between their yearning to create independent women and their concept of women’s proper role in the social order.237 232 233 234 236 237

Comte to de Vaux, February 5, 1846, CG, 3:310. De Vaux to Comte, October 9, 1845, CG, 3:148. Comte to de Vaux, September 28, 1845, CG, 3:138. 235 De Vaux, Willelmine, 6. Ibid.,14, 15, 19. Claude Holland, “Mademoiselle Merquem: De-mythifying Woman by Rejecting the Law of the Father,” in The World of George Sand, ed. Natalie Datlof, Jeanne Fuchs, and David A. Powell (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 178.

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Moreover, most of the men in de Vaux’s story were depicted as theatrical, superficial, or cruel. Their poor behavior lent support to Willelmine’s original argument in favor of women’s liberation. The main male character, Raoul, was a renowned poet, who was avid for power and wealth. He seduced Willelmine one night in her bedroom by convincing her that both of them were above normal social rules. She ended up alone the next morning. Nevertheless, they eventually had an affair for several months. During this time, Raoul used Willelmine’s works to make money for himself while having affairs on the side. What happened to Willelmine reflected de Vaux’s fears that Marrast, like Raoul, would regard her as an “instrument,” take advantage of her sexually, intellectually, and financially, and cause her to have a mental collapse. In addition, St´ephane Sax, the philosopher modelled on Comte, looked forward to the day when he would acquire “full control” over her. L´eonce Montgolfier, Willelmine’s supposed savior at the end of the story, tried to dominate her as well.238 All three men were intent on squashing one of Willelmine’s – and by extension de Vaux’s – defining characteristics, her desire for independence. As seen in her depiction of the poor female beggar unfairly imprisoned by policemen and of the fragile female patient in the asylum persecuted by doctors, de Vaux tended to see herself and other women as innocent victims of men’s desire for domination. The strongest, most admirable woman in the story was Montgolfier’s sister, Madame Rolland, who lived with her daughter in the countryside. After Henriette Marie objected to the depiction of Willelmine’s mother, de Vaux, with Comte’s encouragement, created Madame Rolland. (Around this time, Comte lent to de Vaux the memoirs of Madame Roland, whose last name may have inspired her.) De Vaux hoped to placate her mother by letting her identify with this good-natured, virtuous, competent mother instead of Willelmine’s evil mother.239 At the same time, de Vaux revealed her ambivalence toward conventional gender roles. Having lost her husband, Madame Rolland learned to rely chiefly on herself and promoted the importance of “independence,” “liberty,” and “solitude” – the same values that de Vaux extolled in her letters to Comte. She managed her estate in a profitable manner. Unlike Willelmine, who feared the study of the sciences, Madame Rolland relied on them to make her lands more fertile. Indeed, Willelmine was surprised that this “positive woman” was not “dry and austere” but the “sweetest” woman she had ever met. Here de Vaux was defending women’s study of the sciences, although earlier in the novel she had mocked Willelmine’s pursuit of this subject and in a letter to Comte written several months before, she had derided her own knowledge of mathematics. Through her kind heart and keen mind, Rolland, according to de Vaux, had also succeeded 238

De Vaux, Willelmine, 3, 19.

239

Comte to de Vaux, February 5, 1846, CG, 3:310.

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in giving her daughter an excellent education, for she believed that the “most imposing task that a woman could embrace” was “that of bringing up another [woman].” Education taught women to exert an “empire over themselves,” that is, to subordinate their penchants to their reason. Madame Rolland’s discourse on the importance of the “education of women,” which sounds strangely similar to that of Willelmine’s mother, encapsulated material that de Vaux had undoubtedly planned to use for her column for Le National.240 Perhaps it was also a subtle critique of Henriette Marie. In sum, Willelmine seems to have several strands that are at cross purposes. The figure Willelmine herself is full of contradictions, condemning marriage at one moment and eager to wed Raoul the next. Her confusion seems to mirror de Vaux’s. Years before, in 1840, de Vaux explained to her brother Max, “There is often a lack of harmony between my heart and my character. One goes to the right, the other to the left.”241 The disjuncture is evident here. De Vaux wrote the book to condemn incipient feminism but ended by defending many of its precepts. Like many other women bothered by their inferior status, she sought a voice of her own. Like Madame Rolland, she was forced to assume a solitary life and wanted to re-create her existence in a manner that would make her proud. Yet breaking away from conventional gender roles made her anxious. The central problem faced by Sand and the protagonist of her work, Marcie, and by de Vaux and the female characters in her story, Willelmine and Rolland, was that of finding a worthy role in society for the intelligent woman. Sand’s and de Vaux’s inability to resolve this problem and their ambivalence toward the women’s rights movement may have contributed to the unfinished state of both of their works. There was a touch of irony in de Vaux’s ambition. Challenging Sand, one of the most compelling literary figures of the age, and debating the controversial subject of marriage – a “gold mine” – she believed the book would bring her success and wealth.242 To achieve celebrity as a woman writer, de Vaux took advantage of the liberty that the women’s movement was demanding only to use it against that movement. In effect, she sought independence through her writing to emphasize women’s need for a protector, and she yearned to be heard as a woman only to defend the silencing of women. However, the status quo that she hoped to maintain seemed tarnished and inadequate. Willelmine is telling in what it leaves out: any allusion to a happy marriage. 240 241 242

De Vaux, Willelmine, 27, 28, 30, 32. Clotilde de Vaux to Maximilien Marie, August 2, 1840, MAC. De Vaux, Willelmine, 17.

Chapter 4

The Muse’s Tragic End

You were . . . the most eminent woman from the point of view of your heart, mind and even character whom universal history has heretofore presented to me. Comte, “Onzi`eme Confession annuelle,” October 12, 1856

health, f inancial, family, and frie ndship problems As de Vaux labored on her book, she had to face myriad problems that would have proved daunting to any writer. She had to contend with the pressure from Comte to become more than a friend, though she told him frequently did that she not love him. She was disturbed not only by palpitations and fatigue but also by family fights. She loved her mother dearly for her selflessness but found her to be blind to what was going on around her. In de Vaux’s eyes, Madame Marie was overly suspicious of Comte and excessively solicitous of Max. Comte, who found Max presumptuous, aggravated the problem by severely criticizing the work on the sciences that he was writing. Max would no longer speak to him. Given these tensions with Madame Marie and Max, Comte seemed intent on estranging de Vaux from her family. But she felt she owed them the “justice that is due to them” for taking care of her.1 Nevertheless, she increasingly relied on Comte to supplement their care. He lent her money to pay for heat and clothes, which allowed her to keep up with the fashion of the day. Comte made no secret of the fact that he enjoyed her financial dependence on him, for he felt it strengthened their “sacred liaison.”2 Massin had always complained that he relished the power that being the breadwinner brought him.3 In fact, in terms remarkably similar to those used by de Vaux, Massin wrote at one point, “Only the habit of work gives independence.”4 Both women hated relying on him. When de Vaux, who favored openness with her family, informed Comte in November that she 1 2 3 4

De Vaux to Comte, November 9, 1845, CG, 3:184. Comte to de Vaux, November 13, 1845, CG, 3:192. Caroline Massin to Blainville, December 20, 1839, MAC. Massin to Comte, February 4, 1850, MAC.

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finally told her parents of his loans, he was furious; he worried that her family would pay him back and then forbid him to see her. But he did not tell her about his concerns. Instead, he made fun of money, calling it the “great goddess of today.”5 However, he was in private very worried. The English subsidy was gone. The Ecole Polytechnique did not offer him a new position. No students were clamoring for private lessons. To accommodate the two women in his life, Comte decided to take up the kind offer that Massin had made to him on September 17 after learning of his financial problems. Ever grateful for his ensuring her survival, she wrote, If next year you must decrease my allowance, do not worry, [for] I can live on less and know very well that if you could give me ten thousand francs, you would; but if you have to exhaust yourself so that I do not have to suffer any changes, this would give me much pain, for I know how tiresome it is to give private lessons. Do not worry about me more than is necessary; that is my desire.6

Although slightly concerned about the difficulty she would face in changing her habits, he decided to reduce Massin’s “exorbitant” allowance beginning in 1846 from three to two thousand francs a year.7 That still left him with five or six thousand francs a year for his own expenses. This decrease proved difficult for Massin; her annual rent alone was 740 francs, and she could barely survive on one hundred francs a month for all her other expenses.8 When Comte’s financial troubles were acute, he was late in paying her. She wanted a monthly stipend. Comte dismissed her demands and her financial worries as frivolous and urged her to cut back on her expenses, although he would not do the same. The following summer she moved to a cheaper, smaller apartment, giving up half of her furniture. Because back problems made it almost impossible for her to move, she also hired a servant. Spending three times more than her husband gave her, she become increasingly anxious.9 Little did she know that Comte used at least part of the money he saved in this manner to entertain, help, and later bury de Vaux. All she knew was that his behavior was changing; he no longer answered 5 6 7 8

9

Comte to de Vaux, September 26, 1845, CG, 3:136. Massin to Comte, September 17, 1845, MAC. Comte to de Vaux, September 26, 1845, CG, 3:135. See also receipts signed by Massin, MAC. This was the rent for the apartment on the rue de la Tour d’Auvergne. See Massin to Comte, 1844, MAC. No day or month is given. She describes her difficulties in Massin to Comte, June 29, 1846. Massin to Comte, July 18, 1847, MAC. She moved to 23, rue des Martyrs. See also Massin to Comte, November 7, 1847, MAC.

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her letters. Still proclaiming her love for him, she was ignorant of the fact that Comte now was obsessed with another woman. In fact, he told de Vaux that he had never loved his wife at all and that the only woman he had cherished in the past was Ernestine de Goy, the object of an adolescent crush.10 De Vaux was his “first real love.”11 As his love for her increased, his hatred of Massin did as well. He admitted that Massin was by no means a “common woman”; she was, indeed, intellectually gifted. Yet her lack of “moral purity,” as seen in her “blind personality, extravagant pride, and limitless vanity,” stymied her intellectual growth. In contrast, de Vaux’s “moral perfection” meant her “intellectual future” would be “beautiful.”12 Whereas de Vaux was the positive model of female behavior, Massin was the negative example. Unlike de Vaux, she allegedly did not treat him well. He accused her of even respecting Marrast more than him – an accusation that completely exasperated her. He treated her with increasing hostility even when she faced difficult times. After her uncle died, she told Comte that she was sad that she could not procure for herself the portrait of her maternal grandmother, who had raised her, and that she could not claim any inheritance because she was illegitimate. Comte informed de Vaux that Massin was “vicious” and that he would write to her only when it was “strictly necessary,” which was certainly not the case in this situation.13 De Vaux showed a more generous spirit in telling Comte that “those who are mean often have more need for pity than those who are good.”14 Yet her words fell on deaf ears. Despite his financial problems, Comte did not hesitate to renew his subscription to the opera at the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien. Instead of going three times a week, as he had often done since the 1841–2 season, he eliminated the Tuesday night performance and went only on Thursdays and Saturdays. He purchased an additional subscription for de Vaux, so that she could accompany him on Saturdays.15 On Saturday, October 11, 1845, Comte took de Vaux to their first opera, Lucia de Lammermoor by Donizetti. They were both excited about the outing, particularly because the famous Madame Persiani sang the lead role. 10 11 12 13 14 15

Comte to de Vaux, November 24, 1845, CG, 3:206. Comte to de Vaux, December 26, 1845, CG, 3:252. Comte to de Vaux, February 15, 1846, CG, 3:323. Comte to de Vaux, March 4, 1846, CG, 3:345. See also Massin to Comte, August 13, 1849, MAC. De Vaux to Comte, March 2, 1846, CG, 3:343. He and de Vaux sat in seats sixteen and seventeen in the orchestra. Comte’s favorite seats were sixteen and eighteen, especially the latter. A season’s subscription cost 230 francs. See record of Comte’s subscriptions to the “Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien,” in packet in Documents, MAC.

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That night, however, after the performance, de Vaux became very ill. Feeling weak, she began coughing up blood and in the weeks to come suffered from lung congestion, migraines, insomnia, and high fever. Comte, an avid follower of Broussais, who advocated bleeding as the panacea for most illnesses, was pleased to learn that the Marie family doctor, Ch´erest, finally decided to treat her with leeches.16 But then not recognizing her consumptive state, Ch´erest also gave her digitalis because he thought she had a heart problem.17 The medication made her pulse race and further depleted her energy. Depressed and weak, she could hardly work on Willelmine, the chief diversion from her many problems. Nevertheless, she vowed to complete it and achieve her independence.18 Her illness was aggravated by the terrible quarrels she had with her mother, who did not take her illness very seriously; she later admitted that the family thought de Vaux was simply a hypochondriac.19 Without telling her relatives the full extent of her illness for fear they would further intrude on her life, de Vaux begged to receive the entire allowance from her uncle so that she would not have to eat at rue Pav´ee and could conserve her strength for her work. Henriette Marie would not hear of this arrangement. She wanted to keep her access to this allowance because she herself was in financial straits, caused partly by the fact that she was supporting her unemployed son Max and his family. She gave de Vaux only fifty francs, sarcastically telling her to wait for her writings to bring her wealth and liberation. De Vaux complained that her mother, resentful at being lampooned in Willelmine, wanted her to feel the “stumbling blocks of emancipation.”20 Desperate for freedom from her family, de Vaux leaned more on Comte, who was eager to help in every way possible, especially to increase her dependence on him and to show that he cared more about her than her family did. Having studied at the medical school at Montpellier, Comte must have recognized the signs of consumption in her coughing up blood and generally weak condition. He sent his maid, Sophie Bliaux, to cater to de Vaux when she was feeling particularly bad and to help her use a machine with cupping glasses that her doctor lent her from time to time to relieve her congestion. 16 17

18 19 20

Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, Broussais et le mat´erialisme: M´edecine et philosophie au XIXe si`ecle (Paris: M´eridiens Klincksieck, 1986), 77–81. Ch´erest had treated her for two years. Clotilde’s former doctor, Andral, had also thought she merely had a heart condition. He prescribed digitalis and a plaster of hemlock to be applied to Clotilde’s chest. This was the treatment that Ch´erest followed. See “Ordinance of Dr. Andral,” July 7, 1842, MAC. See also de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 302. De Vaux to Comte, December 28, 1845, CG, 3:257. M´emoire of Madame Marie, no date, excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 385. De Vaux to Comte, January 4, 1846, CG, 3:268.

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Comte gave her books to distract her and different household objects. In late November, to gain more control of her, Comte persuaded her to stop seeing Ch´erest, who was in love with her, and to go secretly instead to his own physician, F´elix Pinel-Grandchamp.21 Referring to the happiness derived from mutual dependence, he relished the “noble office of protector” and called her his “only real wife.” Making her the central point of all his activities, he was full of “new energy.”22 He had never felt so generous, virtuous and happy as when he helped her. He was certain that he was undergoing a moral “revolution” and beginning “a second existence, [one that was] purer and fuller” than his previous life, which lacked this “noble love.”23 Finally, in November, after complaining about her relatives’ unhappiness with her relationship with Comte, de Vaux devised a new arrangement. Instead of going twice a week to her mother’s place on the rue Pav´ee, he would go only once a week (on Mondays) and then visit de Vaux at her apartment on Fridays or Saturdays. She would still visit him at his place on Wednesdays. (Eventually, they alternated; he visited her sometimes on Wednesdays, and she came to his apartment at the end of the week. However, it seemed that she went to his place more often than he visited her.) In effect, spurred by jealousy and suspicion, her mother and brother’s efforts to get de Vaux away from Comte ended by bringing them closer together.24 21

22 23

24

Dr. Ch´erest owned the house at rue Payenne and may have lived in her building. PinelGrandchamp lived on the rue Saint-Hyacinthe, next to the Place Saint-Michel. Curiously, M. Lenoir lived at 19, rue Saint-Hyacinthe-Saint-Michel, almost next door to PinelGrandchamp. Comte had known Pinel-Grandchamp at least since the early 1830s, when they both had been members of the Soci´et´e Phr´enologique de Paris. Lenoir was a member too. In 1831, the general secretary of this organization was Franc¸ois-JosephVictor Broussais, who devised a materialistic approach to medicine, which regarded irritation as the source of illness and recommended blood letting and leeches as the best remedy for illness. Comte and Pinel-Grandchamp were sympathetic not only to his theory but to the aims of one of the leading republican groups, the Soci´et´e des Amis du Peuple. Despite their common interests, the two men had had somewhat of a falling out around 1840, perhaps after Comte had hired him to take care of a friend of his, Jacques Montg´ery, who eventually died under his care. Pinel-Grandchamp had charged what Comte considered to be an exorbitantly high fee and had had troubles collecting it. Whether out of greed or out of a conviction that he could do nothing more for Montg´ery, Pinel-Grandchamp had wanted to stop seeing him. His actions had not endeared him to Comte. Nevertheless, Comte claimed to have forgiven him. They renewed their friendship, meeting from time to time for dinner. Comte took one of these opportunities to give the doctor details regarding de Vaux’s health. In late November, de Vaux then began to visit Pinel-Grandchamp. Braunstein, Broussais, 64-81.See also Pierre Arnaud, CG, 1:425, note CXXVI; CG, 3:422, note CDXV. Comte to de Vaux, October 19, 1845, CG, 3:156–7. Comte to de Vaux, November 11, 1845, CG, 3:188; Comte to de Vaux, October 19, 1845, CG, 3:157. See also Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:104. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 262.

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Pleased at having access to her “sanctuary,” Comte nervously reminded her that he hoped for a more “complete union.” His increasingly frequent use of the informal pronoun tu [you] indicated his desire for greater intimacy. Infuriated, de Vaux demanded that he understand that she was weak, in fact “destroyed” by her illness. She did not welcome “new pains” that would add more turmoil to her already fragile existence. Yearning “to die without ties,” she cherished her independence and work above all else. She told him, “I made a marriage of convenience, and I admit that I like celibacy almost as much.”25 Yet he increasingly harassed her about having sex with him, though she was dying.26 At one point, he gave her a forbidden kiss on the lips but was then embarrassed because he belched while doing so. De Vaux seemed more amused than upset by his awkwardness. His nervousness affected his health; he felt incapacitated and could barely sleep again. He beseeched her to move into his apartment, where he could take better care of her. Reflecting his tendency toward delusions of grandeur that were evident when he went through periods of manic depression, he wanted to have in her regard “the function that religious people attribute to their Providence.”27 She quickly rejected his offer as improper. A little later, after having spent a good part of a day coughing up blood, she went to visit Comte. She fainted on his sofa. Lusting after her body, he checked himself, realizing at that moment that she would never see him as more than a friend. Nevertheless, he still hoped to persuade her to go further with him. He wrote, “Love has always seemed, without doubt, to constitute . . . a pre-condition that is even more indispensable in your sex than in mine. But your nature is eminent enough to merit an honorable exception to this general rule.”28 De Vaux grew so depressed that she agreed on November 23 to sleep with him out of gratitude for his kindness if that would make him happier. However, priding herself on being an “honest and pure woman,” she reminded him that she did not love him and did not relish the prospect. She wrote, “If you persist in considering as unfortunate for you my desire for emotional tranquility, . . . I will sacrifice it for you. I am tired of suffering or of making others suffer.”29 Ashamed and intimidated, Comte quickly retreated, boasting about his enormous self-discipline. He wished that outsiders knew of their sacrifices so they could see the high level of purity that humans could 25 26 27 28 29

Comte to de Vaux, November 20, 24, 1845, CG, 3:200, 207; de Vaux to Comte, December 5, 8, 11, 1845, CG, 3:221, 224, 231. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 284–6. Comte to de Vaux, November 11, 1845, CG, 3:188–9. Comte to de Vaux, November 13, 1845, CG, 3:191. De Vaux to Comte, November 23, 1845, CG, 3:205.

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attain. Yet the struggle to overcome his sexual urges was not over. His letters continued to be peppered with crude allusions to the “physical inconveniences” caused by his continence – inconveniences that kept him up at night.30 Until the end, his need to display himself as a man with formidable sexual prowess was at war with his self-representation as the virtuous regenerator of humanity. To complicate matters further, Comte could not fulfill his sexual desires without eliminating the divine status that de Vaux had assumed in his eyes. No other woman combined to the same degree “moral purity with mental superiority.” He made her into his muse, comparing her to Julie de Lespinasse, who inspired d’Alembert, and Elisabeth de La Live de Bellegarde, comtesse d’Houdetot, who stimulated Rousseau.31 However, he also considered her to be his collaborator, assuming the part that Emilie du Chˆatelet played with Voltaire. Having been abandoned recently by Mill, Comte needed another partner. He hoped that his collaboration with de Vaux would mark the end of the battle between men and women that both of them saw raging around them. The idea of this type of association seemed “to be in the air.” Just as Comte penned the dedication to the Syst`eme in honor of de Vaux, Mill surreptitiously wrote a dedication to Principles of Political Economy to his muse/collaborator Harriet Taylor.32 But whereas Mill did not publicize his illicit relationship, Comte, who prided himself on his boldness, could not wait to do so. He naively thought that his friends and colleagues would be impressed and no one would use this dedication to discredit his ideas. To encourage others to emulate her, he planned to make the “cult of woman” part of the secular religion that he was going to create for the imminent positive stage of history. Preparing the ceremonies for her “glorification,” he knelt down every morning in front of his “altar” and recited a “love prayer,” which consisted of passages from her letters charting the course of their “holy affection.” Part of this “morning prayer” was based on the Our Father. It affirmed that she was his “only real wife, not only in the future, but now and forever.” De Vaux played along with this farce. She started to give him items which Comte later called the “dear relics” of her existence.33 After a visit to the opera to hear Donizetti’s Don Pasquale on November 29, de Vaux sent Comte in “friendship” a basket of artificial red 30 31 32 33

Comte to de Vaux, November 24, 1845, CG, 3:206. See also Comte to de Vaux, December 2, 1845, CG, 3:212. Comte to de Vaux, October 29, 1845, CG, 3:168. Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1983), 117. These “relics” included her poem “Thoughts of a Flower,” and “Lucie.” Comte to de Vaux, October 25, September 6, November 30, December 4, 1845, February 15, 1846, CG, 3:109, 163, 210, 216, 323.

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roses that she made herself. These became a permanent fixture in his apartment and are there to this day.34 She also gave him an eightstanza poem, “Thoughts of a Flower” (“Les Pens´ees d’une fleur”).35 It signalled her fear that her lifelong desire for love would never be realized. Taking on the guise of a flower, she began the poem with this line: “I am born to be loved: oh! thank-you, just destiny!” Nothing could prevent a flower from fulfilling its destiny. Even during the “mortal cold” of winter, a flower endured, protected by “nature.” A flower knew “all” the secrets of love, whereas de Vaux lamented that she knew almost none.36 Comte cried when he read this poem, which was exceedingly “banal,” as even the normally enthusiastic de Rouvre admitted.37 Even Comte took the liberty of correcting some of the lines to make it clearer and more rhythmical.38 Struck by her “gracious sensitivity” and philosophical acumen, he began to read the poem every day.39 Talking frankly of his “adoration” and “glorification” of her, he was already preparing a religion in her honor, a religion that he had been considering since the early 1840s, before he had even met her.40 The poem not only launched Comte into spiritual ecstasy but also sexually aroused him. A few days after receiving it, he complained of insomnia to de Vaux. “You alone really knows where it comes from, and how I am unable to cure myself of it by myself.”41 Furious, she wrote, “My role of nonentity is really the only one that suits me now.” She insisted that “[we] forget about our sexuality to think about our hearts.”42 Comte replied that it was impossible for him to forget about 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41 42

Comte would display them during public ceremonies when he established his religion. Testament (1896 ed.), 19. According to Th´erive, the poetry was later set to music by Brazilian composers and was sung in positivist churches. See Th´erive, Clotilde de Vaux, 156. Comte included the poem as well as “Lucie” and “Lettre philosophique sur la comm´emoration sociale” in the first volume of the Syst`eme. Clotilde de Vaux, “Les Pens´ees d’une fleur,” November 30, 1845, CG, 3:210–11. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 305. Comte also complained of her “prosodic” errors in another poem that she sent him later, a poem in honor of Elisa Mercoeur, a Breton writer who died of a chest illness at age twenty-six in 1835. Admired by Franc¸ois-Ren´e de Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, and Alphonse de Lamartine, her poems, plays, short stories, and novels were republished in a three-volume set, in 1843, to much acclaim. Comte referred to her as a victim much beloved by de Vaux, who identified with her. Comte to de Vaux, January 6, 1846, CG, 3:271; de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 309–10; Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:105. Clotilde’s poem is in her letter to Comte dated January 4, 1846, CG, 3:268. See Madame Veuve Mercoeur, “M´emoires sur la vie d’Elisa Mercoeur,” in Elisa Mercoeur, Oeuvres compl`etes d’Elisa Mercoeur de Nantes, pr´ec´ed´ees de m´emoires et notices sur la vie de l’auteur, e´crits par sa m`ere, 3 vols. (Paris,1843), 1:xvii–clxxxvi. Comte to de Vaux, December 2, 1845, CG, 3:212. Comte to de Vaux, December 4, 1845, CG, 3:215, 216. Comte to de Vaux, December 2, 1845, CG, 3:212. De Vaux to Comte, December 4, 1845, CG, 3:213–14.

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her body. In eloquent terms, he wrote, “To forget our sex, to live as if you were not in the world, in short, to give my soul to you and my body to others, all that is impossible for me.”43 However, he vowed he would not rape her and could exert self-control when he was around her. Protesting her rule that he not think of sex, he tried to reassure her with words that were, in truth, hardly reassuring: “It is never in your presence that I feel carnal desires; I am at that moment entirely bound up in the happiness of contemplating you.”44 Nevertheless, he assumed that they would have a “final union” once she achieved her “personal liberation,” that is, her economic independence from her parents.45 At this point, de Vaux became more irate and replied, “It is not, my dear friend, my material liberty which I need to have at my disposal; it is my full moral liberty. You love me, it is true, as I merit to be [loved]; and I give you back the same in my heart, but that ends there.” She refused his request that they should become more intimate, for she wanted “to die without ties,” which had caused her so much suffering.46 De Vaux’s response shocked Comte. He claimed it was the first time that she had really made it clear that she would never sleep with him. When he started arguing with her again, she insisted that she had never changed her position. Though she considered Comte “the best of men and the most just,” she had no desire to go further with him, especially because what she desired most at the moment was calm.47 In a sense, just as Comte practiced cerebral hygiene to avoid reading critics who could upset him, she was creating a kind of emotional hygiene to avoid “new pains” that would throw her fragile existence into turmoil.48 Because he could not establish her tie to him in the “natural” way, that is, by means of an “ineffable voluptuous pleasure,” Comte yearned for some other guarantee of that connection.49 His insecurity is evident in his worries about being abandoned by her and in his jealousy of others. He finally decided to take up and repeat as a kind of oath her statement that “death alone will break our ties.”50 This comment, to him, was a sign of their engagement for life. De Vaux was surprised that he took this casual remark so seriously as a commitment on her part. She reminded him once again that she disliked obligations that threatened her “liberty” and peace of mind and she disapproved of efforts to regulate the future trajectory of sentiments.51 43 44 45 47 48 49 50 51

Comte to de Vaux, December 5, 1845, CG, 3:219. Comte to de Vaux, December 7, 1845, CG, 3:224. Comte to de Vaux, December 5, 1845, CG, 3:219. 46 Ibid., 220–21. De Vaux to Comte, December 8, 1845, CG, 3:224. De Vaux to Comte, December 11, 1845, CG, 3:231. Comte to de Vaux, December 10 and December 12,1845, CG, 3:230, 232. Comte to de Vaux, December 10, 1845, CG, 3:230. De Vaux to Comte, December 12, 1845, CG, 3:235.

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Although underscoring the “inequality” in their feelings for each other, this episode in their relationship ended by clarifying sexual matters and marked, to Comte, the finale to the “great crisis” that had begun in September, when the misunderstanding about sex had first emerged and his financial worries had increased with the bad news from his English patrons, who no longer desired to subsidize him.52 In December, Comte admitted that since September, he had been both psychologically and physically agitated, probably close to a complete mental breakdown. (In truth, signs of inner turmoil had appeared as early as 1844 and worsened in May 1845, shortly after he began writing to de Vaux.) He had been “tormented by the almost continual anxiety” that their relationship could end “at any instant.” This instability had led to gastric problems, insomnia, nervous agitation, and even convulsions. But now that he felt de Vaux had given him some kind of commitment for life, this worry disappeared, or so he said. He hoped to recover soon his “full cerebral health.”53 Now that he finally began to grasp her intractability on the issue of sex, Comte increasingly valorized chastity as a source of moral perfection.54 At the same time, he maintained that despite the fact that he and de Vaux – and by extension men and women – should rise above their bodily instincts, they should not forget their masculinity and femininity. Indeed, they should collaborate on developing their respective natures more fully. Freed in a sense from their bodies, they should redirect their energies into making themselves better, that is, fuller, human beings. Comte began to develop an androgynous ideal – an ideal that also appears in the works of contemporary feminists like Jenny P. d’H´ericourt. Inspired by such thinkers as Gall and Lamarck, she believed that both sexes were modifiable and that with the right education, men and women could develop in a similar fashion.55 Comte maintained that in general, men, who were eminent intellectually, should help women develop their minds. Women, who were experts in the emotions, should encourage men to cultivate their feelings. The “slow progress” of this “reciprocal culture” throughout the ages constituted, according to Comte, “one of the finest productions of our wisdom, both on the collective and personal level.”56 If he and de Vaux could develop traits in each other that were associated 52 53 54 55

56

Comte to de Vaux, December 10, 1845, CG, 3:228. Comte to de Vaux, December 12, 1845, CG, 3:233. Comte to de Vaux, December 10, 1845, CG, 3:229 Jenny P. D’H´ericourt, La Femme affranchie: R´eponse a` MM. Michelet, Proudhon, E. de Girardin, A. Comte et aux autres novateurs modernes, vol. 1 (Paris, 1860), 124–5. D’H´ericourt points out that through education, women in particular could become more rational and active. Comte to de Vaux, December 9, 1845, CG, 3:226.

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with the opposite sex, they could directly attach their own personal growth to all of human evolution. If they could reach an accord in the realms of ideas and emotions and work together, they could present to “Humanity” an example of “the salutary influence of the harmony of the sexes.”57 He pointed out in the “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage” that marriage was the best human association because it aimed at “mutual perfection, which consists of each sex developing more fully . . . the qualities which it possesses the least.”58 Comte was thinking in grand terms, as was his wont. He was also reevaluating the position that he had taken with Mill, when he had insisted that there was nothing women could do to alter their substandard position. Here he seemed to imply that nurture could undo what nature had done in giving each sex a “preeminence which is spontaneously lacking in the other.”59 This conclusion marked a watershed in his intellectual development. The fact that human nature could be shaped led Comte to rethink essentialism. In particular, de Vaux’s strength of character and “powerful reason,” as he himself put it, challenged his traditional assumptions about women. For example, he accused her at one point of changing her mind because she was not “exempt from all feminine fluctuations.”60 But he could hardly subscribe so easily to such a theory once she made it clear that she had not wavered in her stance. De Vaux refused to be confined to stereotypical images of women. She said, “There is no man who could reproach me for having a grain of coquetry or of feminine fickleness (l´eg`eret´e ).” In fact, she disdained the kind of behavior Comte displayed; his lack of self-control and vulnerability to strong emotions represented conduct typically associated with women. Her intelligence also challenged his belief in the inferiority of the female mind. Having met a “good number of women with distinguished minds,” he found her to be one of the few whose “heads had not spoiled their hearts.”61 De Vaux had clearly made Comte more respectful of women, more open to the concept that nurture was largely responsible for sexual differences, and less wary of the dangers of giving women an education. After all, he had seen that her mind had not made her less honest or virtuous. The books that Comte lent her are also indicative of his high regard for her intelligence. He gave her the first volume of Gall’s Sur l’organe des qualit´es morales et des facult´es intellectuelles, et sur la pluralit´e des organes 57 58 59 60 61

Comte to de Vaux, November 2, 1845, CG, 3:175. Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” CG, 3:279. He developed similar ideas about blending gender characteristics in the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 300. Comte to de Vaux, December 9, 1845, CG, 3:226. Comte to de Vaux, December 7, 1845, CG, 3:222. Comte to de Vaux, December 28, 1845, CG, 3:258.

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centraux, as well as Sophie Germain’s Consid´erations g´en´erales sur l’´etat des sciences et lettres aux diff´erentes epoques de leur culture.62 Her intelligence was also recognized by Marrast, whose wife visited de Vaux in mid-December, giving her the impression that she would be warmly welcomed back at Le National. Encouraged by this news, de Vaux suggested to Comte that she needed more time to herself to finish her novel to offer it to Marrast. Fame from her work would ensure that she would not die like the small light of a “candle-end.”63 But the real reason for her desire to eliminate their Wednesday visits for a month may have been that she was weary of Comte’s constant demands. Revealing his continued ardor, he signed one letter in January 1846 with these ambiguous words: “I hug you as I love you, with respect and fervor.”64 De Vaux’s effort to limit Comte’s visits offended him. If he could take two days a week from his precious work to devote to their oneto-one conversations, she could certainly do the same. Yet Comte was not fair. De Vaux, who was far younger than he, had not yet realized her goals. At the same time that he was arguing with de Vaux over this issue, he was writing Mill that during the first half of his career he had “fully sacrificed” his “private life” to his “public life” to accomplish his “fundamental mission” – an accomplishment that made him proud; now he wanted to return to a “normal state.”65 When he was with de Vaux in this so-called normal state, he was indirectly working because the “moral renaissance” that she was effecting within him taught him about “the most delicate emotions of humanity” and helped him “to perfect” his current “social mission,” which demanded “a growing preponderance of feelings over ideas.”66 To dissuade de Vaux from working, Comte bluntly told her that Marrast had offered her work at Le National in exchange for physical intimacy. Revealing a singular lack of self-knowledge, Comte denied his jealousy. It never occurred to him that both he and the “odious” Marrast were yearning for the same pleasure with the same convenient argument that as an abandoned wife, she was justified in seeking socially unacceptable pleasures. De Vaux sprang to Marrast’s defense. In his place, “many men might have done the same or worse than he had done.” It was the risk that ambitious women knew they had 62

63 64 65 66

See “Liste des livres figurant dans la biblioth`eque d’Auguste Comte a` son d´ec`es et prˆet´es par celui-ci a` Clotilde de Vaux,” MAC. Comte maintained that the only other contemporary figure who approached de Vaux in combining “moral purity with mental superiority” was the mathematician Sophie Germain. Comte de de Vaux, February 15, 1846, CG, 3:323. De Vaux to Comte, December 14, 1845, CG, 3:236. Comte to de Vaux, January 27, 1846, CG, 3:306. Comte to Mill, December 18, 1845, CG, 3:245. Comte to de Vaux, December 26, 1845, CG, 3:252.

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to take. She was confident she could use her charms to get what she wanted from Marrast: “I have always had intimate relationships with men; I know them better than I know women.”67 Marrast invited her to a soir´ee on February 18. Desirous of conserving her energy to complete her novel so that she could deliver it to him, she decided not to attend. She resorted to the pretext that she would be out of town, explaining to Comte that if she simply turned Marrast down without an excuse, she would appear to be a boor or “prude,” that is, a woman with no “self-confidence.” De Vaux’s insistence on fabricating an alibi angered Comte. She had recently refused to have dinner with him alone after her Wednesday visits on the grounds that “a woman who goes to dine at a man’s makes a little tour de force.” Appealing to her supposed fear of causing a scandal, Comte said tauntingly that Marrast must “know very well that a young woman cannot go alone to such parties” without suggesting that she could be taken home by “any available man.” Comte wanted her to break off her relationship with Marrast, though he knew she needed this connection to the publishing world. He stated in a very demanding tone: “You could not, Clotilde, remain at the same time my friend and that of a man whom I scorn, especially because of his behavior toward you.”68 De Vaux paid no attention. Her behavior tormented Comte, whose paranoia was at the root of his suspicions. One reason that Massin had left him was that she grew tired of the accusations generated by his mental illness. Like Massin, de Vaux stood up to Comte. She boasted that she would gladly attend Marrast’s party alone: “My look of the independent woman gives me my right of solitary entrance into the most decent houses.”69 After all, she was sure of herself in ways he was not, and her “conduct with other men” was “perfect.” She made it clear that she still considered Comte a very close friend or relative, nothing more: “There is no one else who rivals you in my esteem and affection . . . I like you a great deal; it is, unfortunately, not love any more for me than it is for you. . . . do not torment yourself, and let me pursue peacefully my enterprises.”70 His adoration of her was not real love, that is, a love based upon knowledge of what she was really like. She knew that he 67 68 69 70

Comte to de Vaux, December 12, December 26, 1845, CG, 3:232, 252, 253, 254; de Vaux to Comte, December 14, 1845, CG, 3:236. Comte to de Vaux, February 12, 1846, CG, 3:317. De Vaux to Comte, January 27, February 12, 1846, CG, 3:306, 319; Comte to de Vaux, February 10 and February 12, 1846, 315, 317. De Vaux to Comte, November 23, 1845, CG, 3:205; Comte to de Vaux, February 12, 1846, CG, 3:316. In “Lucie,” Maurice referred to Lucie as the “ideal of Galatea.” Galatea was the statue created and adored by Pygmalion, who prevailed upon Aphrodite to bring her to life. This reference reflects de Vaux’s awareness of men’s propensity to worship their idealized image of women.

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loved only a certain image of woman that made him feel better about himself, that is, more tender and generous than other people saw him. Her frustration knew no bounds; she was adored by Comte, whom she did not desire, and she loved Marrast, who had no genuine passion for her. Nevertheless, she resisted both men, despite their financial and professional aid.71 She empowered herself by using conventional rules of gender behavior to her best advantage when she wanted and then making exceptions when it suited her. “lettre philo sophique sur le mariage” Unable to create a happy marriage in real or fictionalized form, de Vaux asked Comte in January 1846 to write a philosophical letter on the importance of marriage, which she intended to insert in her novel as part of Sax’s campaign to influence Willelmine.72 Comte agreed to do so but felt nervous about it. It was not simply the anxiety of wanting to impress her that plagued him; he sought to destroy the arguments of Saint-Simonism and Fourierism, which, unlike positivism, had many adherents.73 Once he pulled his thoughts together and started the essay, he finished it in one Sunday in bed in a single session lasting over ten hours. Entitled “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” the essay was directed against “anarchical utopias” that attacked the “triple universal foundation of social existence”: property, family, and marriage. Comte sought to show in particular that marriage was basic to human nature and society and was not an institution that had been arbitrarily created, as the Saint-Simonians, the disciples of Fourier, and other radical groups argued in order to dismantle it. Positivism could counter the arguments of all these people, especially by its ability to resolve the “fatal conflict that exists in modern people between the needs of their heart and those of their intelligence.”74 Positivism was thus not an arid doctrine concerned with only academic subjects; it had important positions on issues that affected people’s everyday lives. One surprising aspect of Comte’s essay is his utter naivete and blindness to the problems of marriage. Although both he and de Vaux had separated from their respective spouses, he spoke only vaguely of the “inconveniences” caused by marriage and vehemently rejected the possibility of divorce. To him, people were flexible because of their “native mediocrity,” and their adaptability came to the fore 71 72 73 74

De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 317, 375. De Vaux to Comte, January 8, 1846, CG, 3:271. Comte sent it to her January 11, 1846. Comte to Mill, January 23, 1846, CG, 3:293. Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” CG, 3:277–8.

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particularly in unalterable situations. He said, “No one has chosen his father or his son, and yet these relations reflect complete harmony.”75 But Comte had never been on good terms with his father. He had not communicated at all with him since 1838. Besides a poor opinion of human nature, his theories reflected wishful thinking on his part. They did not seem as rooted in reality as he liked to claim. Boasting that his philosophy was the only social doctrine that had an understanding of the past and relativism, Comte first put the development of radical social doctrines into their historical context. He argued that they were products of the eighteenth-century metaphysicians’ successful and “indispensable” effort to emancipate human reason from theology. The problem was that because of their negative, critical spirit, these metaphysicians had not reestablished any principles on a firm base. Rousseau, with his “chimerical conception of a pre-existing state of nature” and his espousal of individualism, had been particularly destructive because he had condemned all forms of modern society.76 As a result of his influence and that of other metaphysicians, social doctrines were increasingly anarchic and utopian in their disregard for marriage, family, and private property. Unlike theology and metaphysics, which were more concerned with the individual, positivism was “eminently social.”77 Because it had a better understanding of reality and society, it could correct the anomalies of modern life. Revealing his conservative nature, Comte explained that most of the “elementary,” that is, traditional, moral principles relating to the family and marriage were legitimate. They had been merely clothed in religious forms that were outmoded, invalid, and ultimately antithetical to human intelligence and sociability. They were thus weakened by the disfavor into which religion had fallen. For example, it was impossible to maintain the principle of the subordination of the sexes by referring to the “puerile fiction of the physical origin of woman,” that is, the story of Adam’s rib. The positive spirit could consolidate this principle and others by providing them with a more respectable intellectual basis. Positivism’s “incontestable intellectual superiority” would be the guarantee of its “moral efficacy.”78 Comte paraded a myriad of arguments to support the legitimacy of marriage. Although disdainful of Rousseau’s idea of a primitive state of nature, Comte maintained that the family was part of the “fundamental” order. After all, man, like many animals, needed a 75 76 77 78

Ibid., 3:281. Ibid., 277. Comte mocked leftist social contract political theory, whose social model was an “alleged state of pure isolation, preceding all human growth.” Ibid., 3:x. The positivist recognized that “speculative growth is realized by and for society.” Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,”CG, 3:278. Ibid., 278, 284.

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fixed, stable union. Marriage suited him. With Sand and the Lettres a` Marcie in mind, he stated that “the people who most rebel against such ties ordinarily end by deploring bitterly their absence.”79 Comte also argued that marriage was valid because it helped humans develop their superiority, which lay in their powers of reason and sociability – powers that animals did not have to the same extent. Here he reinforced nineteenth-century representations of the two sexes as opposites. Women were emotional, weak, indecisive, and fickle, whereas men were rational, strong, resolute, and persevering. Based on such innate differences, the roles of men and women in society were complementary. Men, the active sex, were in charge of works relating to thought and action, and they made “final decisions.” The “affective sex” was better suited to directing the “culture,” that is, the upbringing and behavior, of the members of society. Their activities should be limited to observation, consultation, and modification. Because almost all women were wives and mothers, there was a “lack of variety” in their characters. It did not occur to Comte to change their preoccupations so that they could develop more fully. Indeed, he maintained that women’s demand to have the same careers as men was aberrant, for their development, instead of being encouraged, would be stymied in such an “unequal” struggle. Instead, women should be content with a life of “relative inertia,” living off men’s work. Despite this wide gulf between the sexes, Comte asserted, revealing again his androgynous proclivities, that marriage helped men become more emotional and sociable and enabled women to cultivate rationality.80 Marriage between men and women would then be presumably more solid. Romantic socialists of the time, such as Simon Ganneau, Pierre Leroux, and Abb´e Alphonse-Louis Constant, also embraced androgynous ideas to emphasize social unity, where competing forces found grounds for reconciliation.81 Comte glimpsed, however slightly, the importance of giving women more opportunities for development. Austin, de Vaux, and Sand, who reflected the new prominence of the “woman of ideas” in mid-nineteenth-century France, seemed to make him more respectful of the intellectual capabilities of women.82 Although his “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage” summarized much of lesson fifty of the Cours, which was written, in 1839, and was replete with misogynist sentiments, he did not dare repeat his statement about woman’s “fundamental inferiority” to man. His diatribe against careerism did suggest, however, that in his mind, women could never be men’s equals. 83 79 82

83

Ibid., 281, 283. 80 Ibid., 279, 282–3. 81 Andrews, Socialism’s Muse, 98–107. On the challenges posed by the “woman of ideas” in France, see Janis Bergman-Carton, The Woman of Ideas. Comte later lamented that he had not fulfilled her desire to learn more about history. Syst`eme, 4:549. Cours, 2:186.

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What is also significant is that he no longer celebrated same-sex associations as he had done previously.84 In the midst of his marital troubles in 1825, he had told Valat that only “attachments” between men were “complete” and “truly enduring.”85 Now, after breaking with Mill and Valat, he concluded that friendship between men was “not really any more satisfactory” than that between women because both types were perturbed by rivalry.86 Indeed, male–female friendships were the most intense and rewarding, presumably because the sexes were so different that they could not be rivals in the same sphere.87 He told Laffitte in March 1846, “The best friend of a man is always a woman. The friendship in this case has more intensity and devotion.”88 Later, when he wrote the dedication to the Syst`eme, he publicly stated that “complete friendship” was possible only between members of opposite sexes, between whom there was no “disturbing rivalry.”89 In addition, Comte stressed the importance of marriage as “the first tie of humanity”; it introduced a person to social life by developing the “affective faculties.” Feelings were more important than ideas or actions, the other two components of existence, because they inspired both of them. They also motivated people to serve others. As if tired of his own work, he announced that speculation and action caused “intolerable fatigue,” but benevolent affections were never the source of weariness; they only made people happy.90 The added attention that he gave to the subject of the emotions was of course partly related to de Vaux, but it also grew out of his own agenda. He had already systematized ideas. The foundation of sociology had in a sense marked the end of the development of the sciences, and its laws of history revealed the future direction of intellectual life.91 It now was time to systematize matters relating to the heart, that is, the emotions, which he had always thought were crucial to personal, social, and political life. 84 85 86 87 88 89

90

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Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:180. Comte to Valat, November 16, 1825, CG, 1:165. Comte to de Vaux, March 8, 1846, CG, 3:351. See P. Laffitte, Note on a conversation with Comte, March 29, 1846, CG, 3:419, notes CDIV and CDV. Pierre Laffitte, Notes from his conversation with Comte, March 29, 1846, MAC. Comte, “D´edicace,”CG, 4:52. See also Comte to Alix Comte, no date, in Auguste Comte, Lettres et Fragments de Lettres (S˜ao Paulo: Centro Positivista de S˜ao Paulo, 1926), 99. This is a fragment of a letter that is not republished in CG. “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” CG, 3:280. In his private correspondence, he told Clotilde that the happiness derived from “pure affection” was far greater than the “most sublime pleasures of contemplative life,” including the satisfaction of discovering “great truths.” Comte to de Vaux, February 22, 1846, CG, 3:327. Georges Audiffrent, A Propos du centenaire de la naissance d’un maˆıtre v´en´er´e (Paris: Paul Ritti, 1898), 5.

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Comte ended his letter by reviewing the history of marriage and by extension gender relations. He pointed out that the transition from polygamy to monogamy in the ancient world did not translate into much “progress” in women’s condition because of “the social nullity of women in military nations”; the existence of domestic slavery, which maintained a sort of practical polygamy; and men’s “excessive privilege” to repudiate their wives.92 Marriage in the ancient world gave only physical, not emotional, satisfaction. Presumably because women had no standing or respect, they could not act fully as men’s companions. Thus Comte did not support the “almost unlimited despotism” exercised by men over women. Ironically, the word “despotism” had often been used by Massin to characterize Comte’s rule over their household; perhaps her rebellion made him more cognizant of domestic tyranny.93 At least, he seems to have understood to a greater extent that the balance of power in a marriage could not be totally in favor of the male. Reflecting the romantics’ admiration for the Middle Ages, as well as his own religious background, Comte praised Catholicism for having advanced the “sentimental education” of humanity. It recognized that love was the “true central motiving force of humanity.” It also first grasped the importance of domestic life and made the family the “center of human morality.” Indeed, Catholicism had made morality for the first time more important than politics. The social reformers of his own day erred by seeking to reverse this process. They sought to remove what was “sacred” and “spiritual” in marriage by transforming it into a “simple temporal contract,” which required state intervention.94 In his mind, they were reviving the ancients’ practice of subordinating the individual to the state. Comte did not expand on this idea, but it is evident that he believed that the institutions of marriage and the family protected the individual from the power of the state. Although he is sometimes accused of being a proto-totalitarian and staunch anti-individualist, it is interesting to note that he denounced state control over every aspect of its members’ lives; he was wary of despotism, whether it occurred in the state or the family. Comte never envisaged forcing people to join positivist organizations or adopt positivist slogans. Like Alexis de Tocqueville, Comte seemed to grasp the dangers involved in allowing the state to intervene more and more in the lives of its citizens; Tocqueville looked to private associations to buffer the individual from the increasingly centralized state; Comte put his hope in the family and in the spiritual power. The pressure of public opinion was 92 93 94

Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” CG, 3:283–4. Comte to Littr´e, April 28, 1851, CG, 6:64. Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” CG, 3:280, 284, 285.

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also a power independent of the state.95 Jean-Paul Frick has correctly pointed out that Comte is the opposite of what we call an authoritarian thinker because he did not believe that the “holders of power” should be the same individuals who set the political goals of society.96 In addition, Comte’s twin goals of pacifism and altruism were not those of totalitarian dictators, who were enamored of violence, often for nationalist or racist ends.97 Comte was neither a fervent nationalist nor a rabid racist. Besides Catholicism, Comte praised chivalry. Foreshadowing the position of twentieth-century scholars, such as Norbert Elias, he maintained that chivalry was a civilizing force.98 Because it emphasized “nobility” and “tenderness,” it made love less brutal and led to the “moral and even physical improvement of both sexes.”99 In fact, it seems that Comte modelled his love for de Vaux partly on a typical chivalrous relationship, where the man adored a married woman and felt uplifted by her. Comte asserted that the efforts of Catholicism and chivalry to change the relations between the sexes resulted in a vast improvement in the condition of women. The “supremacy” of men was restricted, and women gained “material and moral rights” that increased the “just liberty of their interior life.” Comte’s wording is significant. Despite his opposition to the women’s movement, he was affected by its discourse. When he worked for Saint-Simon, over twenty years before, he had renounced the words “rights” and “liberty” as metaphysical and dangerous. They were leftovers from the revolutionary era and had proved incapable of establishing a firm social and political system. But here, in a discussion of the “woman question,” these words seemed to sneak into his vocabulary. However, they lacked their usual punch. Women’s “rights” were “material and moral,” not political. Women’s “liberty” was “interior,” not public. Comte seemed deeply influenced by the new language of the feminists of the 1840s, yet at the same time, he turned their words to his own purposes, making sure women stayed in the domestic 95 96 97 98 99

Laurent Fedi, Comte (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004), 160–61. Jean-Paul Frick, Auguste Comte ou la R´epublique positive (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1980), 43. Fedi, Comte, 159. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, trans. Edmund Jephcott, rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 250. Comte, “Quatri`eme Confession annuelle,” May 31, 1849, CG, 5:32; Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” CG, 3:284. For more on chivalry, see Comte, Appel aux Conservateurs (Paris, 1855), 132; Annie Petit, “Auguste Comte et Clotilde de Vaux: Les Confidences de ‘l’ann´ee sans pareille’ (avril 1845–avril 1846),” Difficult´e d’ˆetre et mal du si`ecle dans les correspondances et journaux intimes de la premi`ere moiti´e du XIXe si`ecle, ed. Simone Bernard-Griffiths and Christian Croisille (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise, 1999), 326.

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sphere and that male “supremacy,” though restricted, remained “indispensable.”100 Nevertheless, it is telling that two weeks later when George Sand showed an interest in coming to his opening lecture of the course on astronomy to the workers, Comte was delighted and flattered. He immediately decided to welcome her and expressed his “regret” at having been rude to her in 1836, when she “spontaneously” made overtures to him – overtures that he had repelled due to a “fatal disgust.”101 Now he hoped to make up for his unfortunate reaction and give her a reserved seat near him at his next lecture. Calling her an “illustrious woman,” he intended to use her talent for “the active propagation of positivism.”102 Comte’s comments are rife with contradictions. On the one hand, he encouraged de Vaux to write against Sand; on the other hand, he obviously admired Sand and did not think she would discredit his philosophy by being associated with it. Perhaps, having expanded his experiences with women thanks to Austin and de Vaux, he had overcome his fears that she posed a danger to society. Yet Comte never met her, for she never made it to his lecture series. De Vaux thanked Comte for his essay, telling him that he was a real innovator, who had left her far behind. Bowing to his conventional attitudes and gratifying his smugness, she explained, slightly bitterly, that it was the “lot of a woman” to base her morality on her feelings, not on intellectual arguments, and to benefit by walking modestly behind great men even if she had to “lose some of her e´ lan.” She obviously felt that Comte’s system was closed to women, despite his insistence that he did not write for scholars or other male specialists. She stated, “If I were a man, you would have me as an enthusiastic disciple; I offer you in recompense a sincere admirer.” But maybe she could not be a complete disciple, for she suggested that she still had doubts about the subjects he was treating. She wrote that she was among those who still have “their foot in the air on the threshold of truth.”103 Either her enthusiasm or her interest was limited, for her comments on his “Lettre” were brief and revealed no real grappling with the issues that he had brought up. The perfunctory nature of her thank-you note also reflected perhaps her disappointment that his work was too heavy to be of much use in a novel.104 He, on 100 101 102

103 104

Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” CG, 284. Comte to Pierre Laffitte, January 26, 1846, CG, 3:303; Comte to Audiffrent, July 7, 1851, CG, 6:116. Comte to Pierre Laffitte, January 26, 1846, CG, 3:303. Comte even had his disciple Pierre Laffitte find out some information about Sand. Laffitte to Comte, January 26, 1846, in “Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d ser., 36 (March 1907): 226. See also Deroisin, Comte, 46. De Vaux to Comte, January 15, 1846, CG, 3:288. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 322.

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the other hand, was excited that he and she seemed to be working together toward the same social goals. He was certain she would rework his material so that his “excessively systematic conceptions” would reach a wider audience, that is, “all sane minds that animate honest hearts – people who have no other philosophic education than that which derives spontaneously from all of real life.”105 As reflected in his Discours sur l’esprit positif, he worried that the Cours, which had not succeeded in attracting the respect of scientists, alienated the common reader. sickne ss and death De Vaux was somewhat hampered in being completely honest with Comte, for she still borrowed substantial sums from him. Much of this money went to pay Dr. Pinel-Grandchamp.106 Like her previous doctor, Ch´erest, Pinel-Grandchamp believed her condition was caused by a heart problem. He adopted a far more aggressive treatment, prescribing many strong drugs that caused her tremors but did not improve her health. In January 1846, the doctor’s prescription of heavy doses of cod liver oil made her feel as if she had fallen into “nothingness.”107 In February, she coughed up blood again and suffered from heart palpitations. Sophie Bliaux, Comte’s maid, began to take care of her two days a week and even slept overnight at de Vaux’s apartment if need be.108 Comte went to see Pinel-Grandchamp, who reassured him that de Vaux would make a full recovery. Despite her doubts, melancholy, and weakness, de Vaux tried to maintain her spirits. She was convinced that Willelmine was something special and remained hopeful about finishing it in March so that it could be published in Le National. But in late February, de Vaux’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. Besides continuing to experience lung problems, she suffered from terrible fevers and a rapid pulse rate. Once again, one of the doctor’s strong potions together with the cod liver oil made her even sicker by giving her severe intestinal problems. She lost her appetite and could not sleep. Comte, who liked to imagine himself as a doctor and even posed as one during his attack of madness in 1826, decided that Pinel-Grandchamp’s treatment was too harsh for her delicate constitution. To relieve the congestion in her lungs, the doctor seemed eager to direct the flow of blood to other organs in her body. Comte thought that this approach went against Broussais’s recommendation 105 106 107 108

Comte, “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage,” January 11, 1846, CG, 3:286. De Vaux to Comte, February 2, 1846, CG, 3:309; Pinel-Grandchamp to Comte, July 5, 1846, MAC. De Vaux to Comte, January 18, 1846, CG, 3:291. De Vaux left Sophie Bliaux a dress in thanks. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 397.

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to be wary of irritating the stomach, the source of many ills. He agreed with de Vaux’s decision not to continue to take cod liver oil until her work was finished. Her weakness and exhaustion made it extremely difficult to write. Even getting out of bed became a challenge. Yet her humor remained. After Comte complained about Pinel-Grandchamp, she wrote, “These doctors have certainly their bad sides. . . . It seems that the patient’s explanations are a disappointment for them; and so they close his mouth with a sentence and his stomach by a pill. What vanity!”109 Comte finally begged de Vaux to stop work and rest. As a disciple of Gall, he believed that thinking and feeling were related and used different parts of the brain. (Intellectual functions were in the front of the brain, whereas emotional functions were in the back.) If the brain was overworked due to excessive emotional stress or intellectual labor, one’s health suffered.110 He claimed, not very convincingly, that her excitation was also partly caused by the approach of spring and would soon pass. He blamed his own excitation on the imminent change of seasons as well. Perhaps in reaction to his disagreement with de Vaux on how she should handle Marrast and her honest assessment of her limited attachment to him, Comte seemed to be going through yet another period of psychological unbalance. Another friend also died around this time, which made him sad.111 He seemed well aware of his emotional turmoil, charting in several letters written in February 1846 the vicissitudes of his psyche. He told de Vaux that the “crisis” that he underwent after meeting her the previous year had been “profound” and “dangerous” and that the “agitation” lasted until January 1846, when he finally overcame it by means of an “active interior surveillance.” His affection for Clotilde now was fully “incorporated” into his being and thus helped his morality, intellectual development, and health. He had fewer stomach problems caused by nervousness, and he was pleased to have surmounted his sexual drives, which struck him as animalistic. His habits had also changed. He went less often to musical performances, although his passion for de Vaux made him even more sensitive to “aesthetic emotions.”112 He led a more sedentary life, 109 110 111

112

De Vaux to Comte, February 24, 1846, CG, 3:332. Morin, “Auguste Comte,” 242. Madame F. L. Dussaussoy to Comte, February 23, 1846. The man who died was Colonel Dussaussoy, the director of artillery in Rennes and one of Comte’s great admirers. See Dussaussoy to Comte, February 2, 1838. Comte to de Vaux, February 25, 1846, CG, 3:334–5. In truth, Comte was very disappointed by the new Italian operas, chiefly those by Giuseppe Verdi, which he thought reflected a “radical” decline in “musical taste.” His library is full of libretti of operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gioacchino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vicenzo Bellini, whom he greatly admired. It also contains Nabucco by Verdi. Comte to de Vaux, March 1, 1846, CG, 3:340. See also Comte to Audiffrent, April 7, 1851, CG, 6:53; Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC; Maria Donzelli, “Auguste Comte et le g´enie

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daydreaming about her instead of taking his usual long walks to flee a terrible “interior sadness.”113 By February 1846, Comte believed that he had surmounted the mental problems that had plagued him since he had met de Vaux; but his preoccupation with his psychological well-being belied his claim. In March, as de Vaux’s health worsened, he admitted that he was experiencing a “new perturbation.” He told her, “Your illness has slightly renewed my nervous symptoms of insufficient sleep and convulsive disposition, which had dissipated two months ago, as I explained to you.”114 According to an expert on manic depression, an individual suffering from this disease is generally “hungry for love” and “any frustration and loss of the object [of his love] precipitates him toward a manic or depressive disturbance.”115 As he watched de Vaux die, Comte’s illness became aggravated, and he became increasingly unbalanced. He wrote de Vaux one love letter after another, proclaiming repeatedly the “perfect purity” of his affection. Frustrated that she did not fit into a clear category, he gave her a myriad of roles, calling her his “perfect friend,” “saintly wife,” sister, daughter, and “mother” to his “second life.” 116 He even dreamt about legally adopting her so that she could at least take his name and reside in his house. This scheme infuriated Madame Marie, who overheard her daughter tell him with both humor and pride, “Mr. Comte, I do not want to be the daughter of a pope.”117 To show de Vaux his love, Comte also gave her a prized possession, a watch that had belonged to his “tender mother” so that she could take her medicine at the proper time.118 This object was all that he had inherited from his mother, and he had had to battle the other members of his family to get it. Just in case it did not function, he also offered her his own gold watch, which he had bought in 1831. But he hoped his mother’s watch would work because he was moved by the prospect of bringing together the “cherished memory” of his mother and his “dominant affection” of the moment.119

113 114 115 116

117

118 119

esth´etique italien,” Auguste Comte aujourd’hui: Colloque de Cerisy (3–10 juillet 2001), ed. Michel Bourdeau, Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, Annie Petit (Paris: Kim´e, 2003), 270. Comte to de Vaux, February 25, 1846, CG, 3:334–5. Comte to de Vaux, March 4, 1846, CG, 3:343. Mar`es, “Maniaque d´epressive,” 704. Comte to de Vaux, February 10, March 1, March 8, March 18, 1846, CG, 3:316, 339, 350, 361; Comte, “Septi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 28, 1852, CG, 6:277. See also Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:93. Madame Marie, “M´emoire de la m`ere de Clotilde sur les relations entre Clotilde et Comte,” delivered by the witnesses of the brother of Clotilde to the representative of Auguste Comte, n.d., MAC. Comte to de Vaux, March 17, 1846 CG, 3:358. See also Audiffrent to Dubuisson, January 26, 1897, MAC. Comte to de Vaux, March 17, 1846 CG, 3:385.

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Depressed at not receiving more support from others, de Vaux was “very touched” by Comte’s “constant solicitude” but complained, as she had many months before, that “so many people have loved me on condition that I love them exclusively.” As the weeks passed, her insomnia, loss of appetite, and fever made it increasingly difficult for her to give to Comte and her family the attention they demanded. She began to retreat from the world, restricting their entry into her apartment, where she now was confined, and insisting on her “rights” as an invalid to do what she wanted. She would not give up the “bit of independence,” which she had worked hard to attain and which made her “so happy.”120 Indeed, she tried to use her illness to create more space for herself. Yet by incapacitating her, her illness reinforced her passivity and dependence, two key components of the traditional representation of womanhood that she had resisted. In trying to visit de Vaux, Comte found himself battling Madame Marie and Max, both of whom he tried to discredit. Max, he told de Vaux, was selfish and cold. Their mother was nervous and powerhungry. She displayed “unjust illusions” and “strange jealousies,” which limited her capacity to love.121 One reason for the increased tension between Comte and de Vaux’s family was their disagreement over her medical treatment. One day F´elicie, disobeying de Vaux’s orders, went up to her room and was shocked to discover just how sick she was. De Vaux immediately complained about Pinel-Grandchamp. She believed that she would have been cured if he had not added severe intestinal problems to her minor bronchial illness.122 F´elicie, Max, and Madame Marie tried to get her to go back to Dr. Ch´erest. Max met with the doctor to arrange everything. But feeling rejected as both a lover and a physician, Ch´erest would not treat her until she personally asked him to do so. De Vaux, not wanting to infuriate Comte, her financial backer, refused. However, even Comte became unhappy with Dr. PinelGrandchamp’s remedies, which he now also concluded had done her much harm, especially in inflaming her intestines, weakening her still further, and endangering her lungs. Alluding critically to Broussais’s approach to medicine, Comte regretted that “medical materialism had exercised its ordinary ravages” on Pinel-Grandchamp because this theory did not take into account the influences of the emotions, such as anxiety, on the body.123 Unable to do much about her emotional state, both he and Dr. Pinel-Grandchamp did agree that she 120 121 122 123

Comte to de Vaux, March 1, 1846, CG, 3:341; de Vaux to Comte, February 27, 28, 1846, CG, 3:336, 337. Comte to de Vaux, March 4, 1846, CG, 3:346. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 344. Comte to de Vaux, March 5, 1846, CG, 3:348. Syst`eme, 2:318. Pierre Arnaud, CG, 3:418, note CCCXCVI.

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must eat very little in order not to cause greater harm to her digestive tract, but her family wanted her to eat to regain her strength. De Vaux protested that she had no appetite. Sometimes, she would eat only six oysters in an entire day. As de Vaux began to pass more blood and Dr. Pinel-Grandchamp did not bother to visit her, she wrote him directly to tell her of her displeasure. She commanded him to follow her illness until its “denouement.”124 While waiting for his reply, she gave herself enemas that resulted in her passing more blood and pus. She hoped that if she rid herself of this material, her fever would disappear and her appetite would increase. Comte congratulated her on taking command of her treatment but seemed slightly annoyed at her criticism of the doctor. He reasoned that the doctor’s absence could be explained by his conviction that he did not think her condition was dangerous. Though unkind, like other doctors, Pinel-Grandchamp was not negligent.125 However, as the weeks passed, and Comte read more medical textbooks, his worries increased. On March 8, de Vaux wrote what would be her last letter to Comte. It was a sad way to end their correspondence, for she expressed her regret that his love for her was so extreme that it perturbed his work and harmed their friendship, which had never developed the way she wanted.126 Comte found this letter “mysterious.”127 His work had not advanced since early September 1845, but he maintained that her love had helped him to conceptualize the Syst`eme, which he would soon take up again. He was most alarmed by her increased “serenity” and sense of “resignation.”128 She knew she was dying. After Pinel-Grandchamp continued to ignore her, de Vaux decided on March 10 to return to her original doctor, Dr. Ch´erest. Comte was in truth relieved, for he believed that this doctor would not give her such harsh medicine and would be more assiduous in following her case. Ch´erest, shocked by the state of her intestines, told Max that he did not think much could be done for her.129 De Vaux, growing weaker every day, no longer let Comte see her very often because his visits troubled and exhausted her. When he did come, his theatrical gestures, his wailing, and the way he knelt forlornly at her bed upset her as well as the members of her family. He began to write her less often because she lacked the strength to read. Having spent so much time on these missives, he now did not know what to do with himself. On March 19, he went to the opera to see the Barber of Seville, but after experiencing “convulsive agitation” and 124 125 126 127 128 129

De Vaux to Comte, March 5, 1846, CG, 3:347. Comte to de Vaux, March 5, 1846, CG, 3:384. De Vaux to Comte, March 8, 1846, CG, 3:352. Comte to de Vaux, March 9, 1846 CG, 3:352. Comte to de Vaux, March 11, 1846, CG, 3:353. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 360.

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depressing thoughts during the first act, he had to leave.130 He read the M´emoires of Madame Roland, which he had not picked up since his youth. But in rereading it, he could only think about how de Vaux was superior in her social convictions to this prominent victim of the Revolution. On the morning of March 20, he visited de Vaux. Her mother, who was at her bedside, thanked Comte for having helped take care of her daughter. Comte was touched not only by this gesture but by the affection de Vaux showed him. She begged him for a lock of his hair.131 Comte described this last scene in his last letter to her. Finally adieu, my eternal companion. Today, you have made me feel profoundly the price of our noble purity, when you permitted me, in front of your mother, to hold your hand tenderly in my two hands, while contemplating this angelic physiognomy whose temporary alteration renders even more touching its suave beauty.132

Shortly after sending this letter, Comte realized that the end was near. According to de Rouvre, who heard the story from his grandparents, Max and F´elicie Marie, it was at this point that a full-blown battle broke out between Comte and the Maries over de Vaux. Comte came for a visit. Wanting her all to himself, he commanded Sophie Bliaux to guard her door and prevent her relatives from entering the sickroom.133 When they tried to barge in anyway, Comte intervened. Fancying himself the master of the household because of the five to six hundred francs he had given to de Vaux, he told Madame Marie that he had orders from her daughter to let only women servants into the room. Madame Marie replied, “Sir, I would be happy, in this case, to be a woman servant, but I am going to ask my daughter if these orders concern me.” Comte insisted again on having his orders from de Vaux. Exasperated, she cried, “But my God! . . . Do they pertain to [her] mother?”134 De Vaux grew tired of such scenes and uttered to F´elicie at one point, “Do you see, it is better that I die.”135 Henceforth, she said very little. On Sunday, March 28, de Vaux gave Comte a gift, the Journal d’un chr´etien, which she had received for her first communion at her convent school. In 1837, she had inscribed in it, “A precious souvenir of my youth. Companion and guide to the holy hours that have rung 130 132 133 134 135

Comte to de Vaux, March 20, 1846, CG, 3:362. 131 Testament (1896 ed.), 87. Comte to de Vaux, March 20, 1846, CG, 3:363. Sophie Bliaux tended de Vaux eighteen consecutive nights before she died. Comte to Massin, January 10, 1847, CG, 4:97. Statement of Madame Marie, no date, excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 388. Clotilde de Vaux, quoted in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 364.

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for me. [It] always reminds my heart of the great . . . ceremonies of the chapel of the convent.”136 De Vaux was seeking consolation. By this time, that is, in late March, de Vaux was so weak that she could no longer exert any influence over Comte whatsoever. Everyone, including Sophie Bliaux, who had a genuine affection for de Vaux, felt uneasy in the presence of this grieving man, who seemed out of control. Fights broke out whenever the doctor arrived. As he believed he was the only competent authority, Comte did not want any medicine to be given to de Vaux. Once when Madame Marie tried to give de Vaux a prescribed drug, Comte would not let her; she had to get help from a doctor who lived downstairs. (The doctor was a colleague of Ch´erest; they both owned the building.)137 Other fights erupted over money and over the problem of whether de Vaux should be moved to another location. De Vaux told Comte in front of her mother, “I would very much like to go sleep at your place.”138 Comte relished this triumph and later included the statement in his daily prayers. On Wednesday, April 1, sensing the end was near, Comte asked de Vaux to give him the letters he had written to her. They were in a glove box that he had presented to her during the baptismal ceremony the year before. Taking the box, he promised to return it to her when she felt better or to keep it if she died.139 Yet desperate for a more significant souvenir, Comte asked de Vaux in front of the doctor to give him the manuscript of Willelmine, her most important possession. He promised to have it published if she consented. She was so despondent about not having completed the story that she could not bring herself to think about leaving it to anyone. She merely said, “I hardly care about my manuscript; people can do with it what they want.”140 After the doctor left the room, Comte disobeyed his wish as well as that of the family and coldly told de Vaux the dreadful news that she was soon going to die. He figured she was too intelligent not to guess, and he did not believe that she should be tricked. Moreover, it annoyed him no end that Max and Madame Marie continued to treat her like a “little girl.”141 He would show her respect by telling her the truth. At this vulnerable moment, Comte again asked her for the manuscript, this time in front of Max and the nurse. But she 136 137 138 139

140 141

See Comte, second copy of prayers in “Pri`eres quotidiennes,” MAC. M´emoire of Madame Marie, no date, MAC. See excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 387. Clotilde de Vaux, cited by Comte, Testament (1896 ed.), 88. Comte to Madame Marie, April 15, 1846, CG, 3:369. Later Madame Marie accused Comte of having stolen this box. Statement of Madame Marie, no date, excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 389. Statement of Madame Marie, no date, excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 389. Comte to Lenoir, April 14, 1846, CG, 3:368.

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was too distressed to respond. Madame Marie would later take this response as a refusal, whereas Comte interpreted it as a sign of acquiescence.142 In fact, he claimed that she “formally declared” that she would leave him the manuscript.143 Their different readings of her last wishes would prove controversial after her death. The next day, despite the family’s indifference to religion, Madame Marie had the priest come to administer last rites to de Vaux. During the ceremony, de Vaux gazed outside the window without saying a word. She did not refuse the sacrament but did not seem engaged by it either. Comte was there at the head of the bed, holding her hand, while Madame Marie, F´elicie, and Sophie Bliaux knelt down on the floor. Once the ceremony started and he became overwhelmed by sorrow, he joined the women on the floor in prayer. Max, offended by the priest’s presence and annoyed at seeing Comte piously engaged in a Catholic sacramental ritual, contained his outrage in the drawing room. Captain Marie stood by the door, stunned that his daughter was dying. When the priest left, Comte went up to de Vaux and swore in front of her family that he would make her immortal; her reputation would surpass that of any other woman. That night, the night of April 2, he stayed next to her and did not return home. This was the only night they ever spent together.144 Comte called it “our only conjugal night.”145 Referring to Comte’s frequent demands for sex, de Vaux looked sadly at him at one point, saying, “You probably have not had a companion for a long time.”146 Comte took her statement to mean that she finally regretted not having had sex with him.147 When Comte informed Massin of his love for de Vaux, nine months after the latter’s death, he vindictively quoted this statement.148 In the days that followed the last rites, Comte made every effort to monopolize the last moments of de Vaux’s life, for he was sure that he alone knew how to take care of her and love her. His greatest rival was Madame Marie. At one point, he commanded her to leave the apartment, adding when she balked, “Madame, you are not here at your home; you are at Madame de Vaux’s house.”149 As Madame 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 365; also note of Maximilien Marie on Statement of Madame Marie, no date, excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 389. Comte to Captain Marie, April 27, 1846, CG, 3:377. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 368. Comte, “Eternels Souvenirs p´eriodiques d’un vertueux amour,” “Souvenirs hebdomadaires,” May 27, 1846, MAC. De Vaux, quoted in Comte to Massin, January 10, 1847, CG, 4:97. He also inserted this statement in his dedication to the Syst`eme. Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4:52. Comte, “Deuxi`eme Confession annuelle,” June 2, 1847, CG, 4:117. Comte to Massin, January 10, 1847, CG, 4:97; Massin to Comte, November 18, 1847, MAC. Comte, quoted in M´emoire of Madame Marie, no date, MAC. See excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 386.

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Marie pointed out, Comte was so irrational that he terrified everyone in the apartment. She told the “odious” man that he was truly mad.150 He replied that de Vaux had called him to protect her from her mother, who would let her die of hunger. A ghastly scene occurred on the night of April 4 in de Vaux’s room. Madame Marie insisted on her rights as a mother to watch over her daughter until the end came. Comte was struck by anxiety that he would no longer be able to be alone with his beloved, who was struggling for air. He reprimanded Madame Marie, saying “You love your daughter like an object of domination and not like an object of affection.”151 Suddenly Madame Marie felt an enormous wave of hatred for him. At one point, according to Madame Marie, she asked de Vaux to choose whether she wanted to be taken care of by Comte or by her, that is, her mother. De Vaux did not answer. Comte thought he had triumphed, but de Vaux quietly said to her mother, “I cannot tell him to go away, but ask my father to tell him.”152 Calling Captain Marie, she begged him to expel Comte. Captain Marie and Comte were on good terms because de Vaux did not care for her father and they were therefore not rivals for her love.153 Comte frequently gave him tickets to the opera. After some hesitation, Captain Marie finally persuaded Comte to follow him to the little drawing room, where Max was waiting. Finally, Madame Marie was able to be with her dying daughter. In the meantime, another scene ensued, this time between Max and Comte. Comte gave full vent to his anger and grief, accusing him of being ungrateful for all the help he had given him and insisting on his right to be with de Vaux after he had given her so much money, love, and moral support. After Max questioned the love between them as well as the large loans, Comte accused him of having sought to wend his way into Marrast’s good graces by introducing de Vaux to him. Max had allegedly used her beauty to acquire a position at Le National. When that ploy did not work, Max became jealous of his sister’s literary success and even hoped she would die.154 Max could not stand these base accusations and insisted that his father throw the man out. After trying unsuccessfully to get Comte to calm down, Captain Marie asked him to leave.155 At this point, Comte threw 150 151 152 153 154 155

M´emoire of Madame Marie, no date, MAC. See excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 386. Testament (1896 ed.), 88. M´emoire of Madame Marie, no date, MAC. See excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 387. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire. M´emoire of Madame Marie, no date, MAC. See excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 388. Comte to Lenoir, April 22, 1846, CG, 3:375.

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himself at the Captain’s feet, kissed his hands, and told him he was very fond of him.156 He begged to be allowed to see de Vaux’s face one last time. Moved by the flattery and display of emotion but also eager to get rid of him any way he could, the Captain relented and promised to call him before the end if he would leave now. Reassured, Comte departed. The following morning, April 5, Dr. Ch´erest determined that she would die that very day. Captain Marie, keeping his promise, called for Comte. When he entered the apartment, the Marie family respectfully left the dying woman’s chamber so that he could have a chance to be alone with her for a few minutes. He went straight into her room without saying a word, bolted the door, and refused for hours to heed the pleas of desperate family members to let them enter. Madame Marie stopped them from breaking down the door to avoid another violent scene that might precipitate her daughter’s death. They could hear Comte talking to himself, perhaps in prayer. Around three o’clock, according to Comte, de Vaux finally uttered her last words, as though she were playing the death scene in the last act of an opera, “Comte! remember that I suffer without having merited it.” She uttered this sentence five times.157 A half hour later, he finally opened the door. The family rushed in only to discover that she was already dead. Comte had in a sense kidnapped de Vaux to have her all to himself.158 After her death, Comte went home and less than two hours later jotted down in the Journal d’un Chr´etien, which she had given him a few days before, her last words, which still resonated in his ears.159 Comte read a couple of pages from the journal every Sunday until he died.160 Clotilde de Vaux was only thirty-one years old. She died of the illness that had tormented her since she was a young girl. Comte attended the funeral, which was held on April 7 at Saint-Denis-duSaint-Sacrament, a church in the Marais. The funeral procession then made its way to the P`ere-Lachaise cemetery, where she was buried at noon in the Ficquelmont-Marie vault. Comte paid for the expenses of the burial, that is, 351 francs.161 He also gave the woman who took 156 157

158 159 160 161

Comte, quoted in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 372. Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4:58. In the Testament, Comte implied that Sophie Bliaux, his maid, heard de Vaux’s last words. She thus may have also been present. See Comte’s notes to the second copy of his prayers in packet of “Pri`eres quotidiennes,” MAC; Testament (1896 ed.), 88. 93. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 374. See Comte, second copy of prayers in “Pri`eres quotidiennes,” MAC. Testament (1896 ed.), 18. Comte was at the funeral until the last moment, when he had to leave for an appointment with an Englishman, who was probably George Henry Lewes. Audiffrent to Dubuisson, January 26, 1897, MAC. See the bill, “Quittance des fournitures faites pour son convoi,” April 7, 1846, MAC.

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care of her ten francs in return for a locket of hair that she snipped off de Vaux’s head after her death.162 Thus ended what Comte repeatedly called “l’ann´ee sans pareille”– “the year without parallel.”163 Immediately after her death, recriminations flew. Who was responsible for her demise? The family blamed Comte for having changed doctors and put her in the hands of a quack. Madame Marie told Comte, “Monsieur, if my poor daughter had not had the misfortune of knowing you, she would still be alive.”164 Max accused Comte of killing his sister with his bad medical advice.165 Comte too criticized her medical treatment. He later expressed his bitterness to a friend, “My Beatrice succumbed not because of her malady, but because of her two doctors,” who misdiagnosed her.166 Out of shame, Comte paid out of his pocket the remaining forty francs de Vaux owed to Pinel-Grandchamp.167 De Rouvre, probably speaking for the family, blamed PinelGrandchamp the most for the tragedy. As de Rouvre points out, it seemed illogical for Pinel-Grandchamp to be trusted by Comte, who typically argued that it was preferable to let an illness run its natural course and to trust the body to cure itself rather than rely on doctors and their useless medicines. Comte had become friends with the person who regularly sat next to him at the opera, Samuel Hahnemann. This German doctor was distrustful of traditional medicine and had founded homeopathy.168 In short, Comte should have done more to prevent Pinel-Grandchamp from treating de Vaux in a harmful manner. Yet Comte maintained that Dr. Ch´erest was most to blame, especially because he gave de Vaux the “fatal potion” on April 3, 1846.169 162

163 164 165 166 167

168

169

Comte, “D´epenses exceptionnelles pour la maladie de Clotilde,” MAC. Comte paid this woman, Madame Hecquet, altogether fifty francs and gave de Vaux’s concierge another ten francs. Comte called de Vaux’s hair “the posthumous lock.” See Comte, “Eternels Souvenirs p´eriodiques d’un vertueux amour,” “Souvenirs hebdomadaires,” May 27, 1846, MAC. See also the notes in the glove box, MAC. Comte to Lenoir, April 22, 1846, CG, 3:374. Madame Marie to Comte, n.d. (April, 1846), MAC. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 2, 301. Comte to Madame N´ısia Floresta Brasileira, August 24, 1857, CG, 8:553. Comte to Dr. Pinel-Grandchamp, July 4 and July 21, 1846, CG, 4:21–2. PinelGrandchamp seemed annoyed that after all the “care and time” he had given to de Vaux, she “brusquely” left him. He denied having neglected her. See Pinel-Grandchamp to Comte, July 3, 1846, MAC. Comte also carried on conversations with Hahnemann’s younger wife, who practiced medicine too. Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886): 200–201. Comte wrote down the ingredients in that lethal potion: two decigrams of silver nitrate and ten drops of laudanum, mixed in forty grams of water with some quince syrup. See Comte’s handwritten note, “Souvenirs de costumes et attitudes,” September 10, 1846, MAC.

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However, the two decigrams of silver nitrate in that potion was not lethal.170 Noting Comte’s eagerness to assign blame, De Rouvre accused him of bearing “heavy” responsibility for her death by insisting on having the final authority in the sickroom as in all other realms.171 Comte’s arrogance, harsh words, and cruel behavior deeply hurt the Marie family. Madame Marie, who died still grieving twenty months later, told F´elicie, “I will never pardon Auguste Comte for having stolen from me the last sigh of my daughter.”172 Max demanded a formal apology for the insults that he had endured. He considered the possibility of a duel. He engaged two intermediaries to negotiate with Comte on the terms. One was Dr. Ch´erest. The other was J. N. d’Aguiar, a thirty-year-old Portuguese man, who was studying mathematics with Max in preparation for a career in engineering. He had frequently expressed his admiration for Comte, whom he had met on several occasions.173 On April 8, one day after the funeral, Ch´erest and d’Aguiar wrote to Comte telling him of their intention to visit him the following day. When they arrived, Comte refused to receive either man. D’Aguair asked Comte to name two intermediaries to whom he and Ch´erest could address themselves. He appealed to Comte as the founder of a philosophy that celebrated respect for others as the basis of social order.174 Lamenting that he had lost more than anyone else, Comte insisted on his need for solitude. Despite “their wrongs,” the Marie family, according to him, had been given a “generous pardon” by de Vaux, and he would respect her wishes not to wrangle with them.175 He could not understand what Max could possibly want from him. Surely he was misinterpreting “some words that had escaped.”176 While continuing to ignore Ch´erest in particular, Comte finally agreed to appoint one intermediary. He told d’Aguair to see Mr. Lenoir, the liaison between himself and Massin. Because Lenoir was an acquaintance of the Maries, Comte hoped he could pacify the Maries to avoid a duel. 170

171 172 173

174 175 176

It is estimated that ten grams of silver nitrate is fatal. See U.S. Department of Energy, “Toxicity Profiles,” Risk Assessment Information System, http://rais.ornl.gov/tox/ profiles/silver_f_V1.shtml (accessed December 26, 2006). Dr. Thomas Abel has also informed me that only a large, single dose of ten to thirty grams of silver nitrate would have killed de Vaux. I thank him for this information. De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 349–50. Madame Marie, quoted in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 381. Indeed, Comte was visited years later by Aguiar’s wife. Comte to Madame Aguiar, November 8, 1849, Collection A. Bixio, Autographes IIC, no. 182, N.a.fr. 22735, BN. This letter is not published in CG. J. N. d’Aguiar to Comte, April 10, 1846, CG, 3:421. Comte to Lenoir, April 14, 1846, CG, 3:367. Comte to d’Aguair, April 11, 1846, CG, 3:366.

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Madame Marie detailed her complaints to Lenoir in front of Max, F´elicie, d’Aguiar, and Ch´erest.177 She explained that Comte had been a close friend of her family but had become crazed by his “brutal” passion for her daughter, who did not regard him the same way. According to Marie, she and her daughter had frequently laughed together at his exaggerated passionate expressions. Although he never won de Vaux’s heart, he finally obtained her confidence because he “fascinated her mind by a great appearance of devotion and incessant flattery.”178 Madame Marie repeated the family’s accusation that he had gone behind their backs in persuading her to go to his dreadful doctor. She described the horrible death scenes where Comte insulted them at every moment and called Max a liar and ingrate. Although she could forgive Comte because she was convinced that he was mad, she wanted him to retract what he had said to her son, who was very hurt by his attack. Madame Marie’s account shocked Lenoir. It confirmed what Sophie Bliaux, an eyewitness, had already told him.179 Lenoir and Comte had a heated conversation on Monday, April 13. Lenoir told him that Max and Madame Marie wanted to know what transpired between him and de Vaux, especially with regards to financial matters. Comte refused any “inquiry” into this “sacred subject.”180 After much protest, Comte agreed to respect the Maries’ demand that they pay him the sum that de Vaux owed him. They did not want to give him the pleasure of having helped their daughter. Comte accepted one payment for the 150 francs that he had lent her plus another payment of 36 francs that she had asked Comte to give to the nurse who attended to her last needs.181 Lenoir made Comte rewrite several times his note to Captain Marie acknowledging the receipt of this reimbursement because he used provocative language in alluding to his close friendship with de Vaux. After Lenoir still refused to deliver his revised note, Comte himself sent Captain Marie a letter referring to the “repugnance” he felt in accepting the 186 francs.182 This reimbursement turned out to be only a third of what Comte had really lent to de Vaux. Comte did not want to tell them the real sum, considering it a secret between himself and de Vaux, 177 178 179 180 181

182

There are several versions of Madame Marie’s m´emoire in the MAC. One of them is scribbled on her book Sculpteur en bois. See also de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 383. M´emoire of Madame Marie, no date, MAC. See excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 384, 386. Statement of d’Aguair, reproduced in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 405. The original is in MAC. Comte to d’Aguiar, April 20, 1846, CG, 3:373. As mentioned in a previous note, Comte actually paid the woman forty francs for taking care of de Vaux and another ten francs for a locket of his beloved’s hair. See “D´epenses exceptionnelles pour la maladie de Clotilde,” MAC. Comte also gave de Vaux’s concierge a ten-franc tip. Comte to Captain Marie, April 19, 1846, CG, 3:371.

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one that they could not discover.183 Although he had to borrow five hundred francs from Blainville and one thousand francs from J. Captier, a family friend, to make ends meet, it pleased him to know that the Maries were still indebted to him.184 He lorded it over Madame Marie, accusing her of having been a tyrant with de Vaux on issues regarding money. Shocked by his desire for “personal vengeance,” Madame Marie could not contain her wrath over this “new accusation.” It made her “fear” his “influence as a moralist.”185 Comte listened to the Maries’ case but refused to fight. He hoped his “adversary” Max would not try to assassinate him. Murder would be a “strange way of refuting the formal reproach of ingratitude toward me, which I addressed to him.” Nevertheless, Comte decided to take “reasonable precautions.”186 Lenoir continued to press Comte to meet with the family, who wanted to learn more about his relationship with their daughter. Comte dismissed him as an intermediary. Comte’s unilateral decision not to engage in a discussion of important issues was part of a recurring pattern in his life. He had broken with Valat, after refusing to dispute philosophical topics brought up in the Cours. Now he ended his old friendship with Lenoir, who had been won over by the Maries. After seeing a letter full of allegations against the Marie family that he sent to d’Aguair, Lenoir wrote to Comte, “Alas!! You upset me.”187 He could no longer tolerate Comte’s insensitivity. Yet somehow Lenoir succeeded in helping him avoid a duel. f inal analysis of clotilde de vaux It is not known if de Vaux managed to find some consolation in her dying moments. She was no doubt distraught at not having finished Willelmine, the key to her independence, and she could not have been happy about the unresolved tensions in her relationships with Comte and her family. She needed time to put her life in order but was caught unaware by the sudden severity of her illness, just as she had 183

184 185

186 187

See Comte’s comments in his notebook “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, mai 1838– septembre 1857,” MAC. De Vaux also confided to Comte that she was cauterizing herself to seek relief and asked Comte not to tell anyone. This was a “woman’s secret.” De Vaux to Comte, February 2, 1846, CG, 3:309. See notes of December 22, 1845 and March 26, 1846 in notebook “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, mai 1838–septembre 1857,” MAC. Madame Marie, “M´emoire de la m`ere de Clotilde sur les relations entre Clotilde et Comte,” delivered by the witnesses of the brother of Clotilde to the representative of Auguste Comte, n.d., MAC. Comte to Lenoir, April 22, 1846, CG, 3:375. Lenoir to Comte, April 21, 1846, MAC.

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been surprised when her husband unexpectedly left her years before. De Vaux was a true victim. Manipulated in various degrees by those around her, de Vaux was a suitable figure for the drama concerning her role in his development that Comte replayed both in his mind and works until his own death. Yet she was not a completely passive, weak figure. After her failed marriage, she realized that by force of circumstance and the law, she had no identity; she had no family of her own, no status as a citizen in France, and no property. She decided to use the few means available to nineteenth-century women to construct an autonomous life and create her own story. An avid letter-writer, she chose to find respect and a public voice as an author. Yet her gender, her body (in terms of both her illness and her beauty), her peculiar status as a single married woman, her class, and even her talent conspired against her. Her difficulties shed light on problems faced by nineteenth-century women of ideas, especially “ordinary” women who were traditional in their views and limited in their abilities but who still sought prominence in the nineteenth-century literary world. Their quest was difficult in an age when women’s rights activism was waning after the initial experiment with the Saint-Simonian variant of feminism had proven risky.188 The new identity that literary women were carving out for themselves in the public sphere threatened both men and women. Everywhere they turned they found themselves involved in power struggles and cultural contests. In her fight to invent herself, de Vaux encountered conflicts with men who sought to monopolize their position as leading intellectuals. Max resented the fact that his mentor preferred her work to his. Marrast undermined de Vaux’s self-confidence by suggesting that the value of her articles depended on her conduct in bed. He wanted her body as a way of achieving victory over Comte. He too desired her body but also wanted her mind and heart. De Vaux’s aspirations involved competition with women. Jealous of her literary success, her mother refused to give her money to help her achieve her goal of independence and would not allow Willelmine to be published. At the same time, de Vaux was involved in a rivalry of sorts with George Sand, which came to involve Marrast and Comte. De Vaux was one of many woman writers who, according to Janice Bergman-Carton, tended to “identify themselves with and capitalize on Sand’s eminence and visibility.”189 To become famous, de Vaux decided to challenge the most important woman writer in France. Marrast approved of her objective because it would sell more newspapers. Comte set de Vaux against Sand in the first place to 188 189

Karen Offen, “Women’s History as French History,” 148. Bergman-Carton, The Woman of Ideas, 199.

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buttress the social order. But in developing a more emotional strain of positivism to attract women supporters like de Vaux, Comte then sought to persuade Sand to use her literary talents to propagate positivism. (Along with Pierre Leroux and Louis Viardot, Sand had founded La Revue ind´ependante several years before.190 ) At the same time, Comte offered to make de Vaux a “regular collaborator” in his periodical, the Revue positive, once it was established.191 His aim was to exploit the femme auteur, whom he had at least initially disliked, to further his own agenda. Overshadowed by Sand and controlled by Comte, de Vaux would have been at a severe disadvantage if his plan had worked. With only one published short story, de Vaux did not succeed in establishing a public image for herself. Ultimately Comte had the victory as the man of ideas because it is due to his fame that she is remembered at all. Reflecting the essentialism and binary thinking of the day, he had offered her the two stock roles for women at this time, that of the fallen woman and that of the angel in the household. After she had rejected the first option, his male gaze fixed her as the perfect woman – docile, emotional, capricious, and dependent. He and her mother used this stereotypical image of woman to deter her from a full-time writing career. After she died, Comte represented her as his collaborator and muse, typical “feminine” roles contributing to someone else’s self-definition. As such, she was a “real model” for all women.192 De Vaux theoretically supported the conventional image of the woman that dominated early nineteenth-century society. Like other women trying to define themselves in the face of a hostile society, she worried that her success might jeopardize her desirability as a woman and her social status as a bourgeois lady. At a time when essentialism dictated that every woman was similar, the distinctiveness of women writers made them seem unfeminine.193 This danger was even more acute for de Vaux, who wished very much to remain feminine and already felt uncertain about her role as a woman because of her inability to have children in an age that exalted motherhood.194 Pressured to conform to the norms of female identity dictated by the culture at large and held by Comte, Marrast, her mother, and others in her entourage, she performed the role of the traditional woman when appropriate. She stressed her lack of sexual desire, her 190 191 192 193 194

Perrot, introduction to George Sand, 21. Comte, Testament (1896 ed.), 239; Comte to de Vaux, October 29, 1845, CG, 3:168. Comte to de Vaux, February 15, 1846, CG, 3:323. Sidonie Smith, A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of SelfRepresentation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 9–10. Jo Burr Margadant, “The Duchesse de Berry and Royalist Political Culture in Postrevolutionary France,” History Workshop Journal, no. 43 (1997): 24–6.

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deficient education, her financial dependence, her physical weakness, and her opposition to George Sand and Sand’s protagonist, Marcie. In “Lucie,” she projected an image of woman as innocent victim of society. In Willelmine, she played the fallen woman, who is saved by a man and revealed to be ultimately virtuous. In both works, she celebrated motherhood, which eluded her and her protagonists. Though de Vaux performed these conventional gender roles to survive, she played other parts as well in order to give herself the sense that she had some agency and control.195 In her writings and behavior, she presented herself as a savvy manipulator of men and came to challenge the traditional representation of women. Without a family, she felt she could not use the argument employed by other contemporary women, such as Jeanne Deroin, who claimed that women had a right to intervene in the public sphere on the basis of their maternal role.196 De Vaux wanted to construct a new female identity without reference to its traditional maternal and domestic grounding and without male control. Independence was her “id´ee fixe,” as she put it herself.197 This ambition to achieve individuality appeared masculinist because it was materialistic and self-serving, not spiritual and altruistic. It threatened men.198 Although de Vaux derided women’s rights activists who demanded gender equality, she tried, in effect, to realize their objective by insisting on the male privilege not only to have the economic wherewithal to live independently but also to affect public discourse through her writing.199 Through Lucie and Willelmine, de Vaux became a spokesperson for social justice, imitating to a certain degree both Sand and Madame Marie. This image of social nonconformist suited de Vaux as well as her traditional roles did. In sum, de Vaux was a collection of different selves, partaking of aspects of the many rich and diverse images made available by the culture at large. To conform to bourgeois convention, she played the abandoned wife, innocent victim, household angel, inspiring muse, and dependent invalid. To resist traditional representations of women, she performed the parts of enthusiastic student, rebellious daughter, independent woman of ideas, writer, and social reformer. These 195

196 197 198 199

On the importance of agency, see Sherry B. Ortner, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 2. On strategies of survival, see Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 273. Bergman-Carton, The Women of Ideas, 95. De Vaux to Comte, December 28, 1845, CG, 3:257. Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 69. For insights regarding the threat of the independent woman in the interwar period, see Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

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varied selves originated in, evolved within, or represented a reaction to the texts that surrounded her. These texts include her stories and letters, which portrayed women as victims of evil men, an unjust society, bad mothers, and a poor education; George Sand’s novels, which depicted transgressive female protagonists; Comte’s philosophical works and correspondence, which celebrated the role of women, especially de Vaux; and her mother’s articles, which directed her attention to broad issues of social reform.200 Having found satisfaction in performing her many parts, de Vaux did not want Comte to bolster his latest self-representation as the forlorn, emotional, virtuous lover by immortalizing her in a single, selfless image of what every woman should be. She resisted Comte’s making her forever into an exemplary moral agent, the role that many women of her day used to empower themselves and a role that she resorted to from time to time for her own benefit. At the end of their relationship, in her last letter to Comte, de Vaux announced with great bitterness,” I have never dared to be myself with you.”201 In a sense, she informed him that she had been acting throughout their relationship and that there was a real, fixed self behind her performances, one that countered his fraudulent representation of her. Whether such an essential, coherent self truly existed in de Vaux , or resides in anyone for that matter, poses an enigma that continues to be discussed at great length. If we grant that the concept of an essential self has validity, other vexing problems emerge: it is not clear whether de Vaux herself understood this self and whether scholars a hundred fifty years later can escape the preconceptions of their own age and use her correspondence, her writings, and the cultural resources of the period to reconstruct that self. But perhaps all of these difficulties are ultimately immaterial because de Vaux was not attempting to unveil her authentic self but to exploit the notion of it. By telling Comte that he did not know her “real” self, she sought to ensure her final victory over him and take her revenge. Angry that he had made no effort to inhabit her world or allow their relationship to develop on a more cerebral plane as she had desired, she insisted at the end on remaining mysterious and inaccessible to his male gaze. She resisted his project of transparency, which he had adopted from the French revolutionaries and realized in his major philosophical works, where he openly discussed his personal life.202 This project was important to reform-minded men like Comte, who felt obliged to prove their virtue and honesty, especially in mid-nineteenth-century 200

201 202

On this idea of a woman’s life caught up in texts, see Kali A. K. Israel, “Writing inside the Kaleidoscope: Re-representing Victorian Women Public Figures,” Gender and History 2 (Spring 1990): 40–48; Israel, Names and Stories, 3–18. De Vaux to Comte, March 8, 1846, CG, 3:352. Mary Pickering, “Rhetorical Strategies in the Works of Auguste Comte,” Historical Reflections/R´eflexions Historiques 23 (Spring 1997): 160.

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France, when codes of honor were still followed.203 But because she was a bourgeois woman who had not had the pleasure of great public acclaim, de Vaux did not feel as privileged and secure as these men to allow herself to revel in a public display of a fragmentary self.204 She reacted by resorting to women’s traditional sphere – the private – and making the very private – her perceived sense of inner identity – even more private. Just as Dora would later mystify Sigmund Freud, de Vaux delighted in this way in baffling the self-satisfied social scientist. Despite the pride that Comte took in his intellectual superiority, she informed him that he could not grasp her essence, which was hers to reveal or conceal. In this way, she subtly mocked his faith in reason and his other self-representation as a genius. She demonstrated that his image of her, which he was going to use to encourage women’s “innate sociability,” was a fraud; there was a limit to her sociability. In effect, de Vaux’s assertion that there was another self, a secret layer that lay beneath all the other performed ones, was a subversive performative act. As Judith Butler has pointed out, “gender performance always and variously occurs” in a “situation of duress.”205 De Vaux was working out her last survival strategy, which she felt was required to preserve the dramatic, transformative potential of her character. Her claim to possess an inaccessible, authentic self around which circulated multiple constructed selves was ultimately a ploy of self-identification, contributing to her sense of individuality, agency, and freedom. De Vaux’s battle with Comte demonstrates that nineteenth-century women were playing with complex issues of identity to resist their male contemporaries’ urge to create stable female allegories, which were used by these men to project a vision of a “better” society – a male-centered society that inevitably continued to make women subordinate. the afte rmath of de vaux’s death After de Vaux’s death, Comte was very much alone. He felt he had lost “the only person” who truly understood him and who loved him with the “purest, holiest, and most devoted friendship.” She had satisfied his “excessively developed needs for affection.”206 203 204

205 206

Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 32. On the provocative question of whether socially disadvantaged people can find liberation in a completely diffused self, see Laura Lee Downs, “Reply to Joan Scott,” Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 35 (April 1993): 450. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 139. On the construction of selves, see Butler, “Performative Acts,” 279. Pierre Laffitte, Notes from his conversation with Comte, March 29, 1846, MAC.

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No one thoroughly comprehended his position because he and de Vaux had carried on their relationship almost clandestinely. She had become very close to him, discussing with him intimate details of her illness, medical treatment, and financial situation, which she hid from her family.207 She had poured out her feelings regarding her mother and the other members of the family. She had let him see just how ambitious she was, how desirous she was to achieve fame through her writings. And yet for all this closeness, they had never consummated their relationship in the physical way he wanted. There was also no legal sanction of their feelings for one another. That is why he probably told people after she died that he had intended to adopt her as soon as he reached the legal minimum age of fifty, though she had two living parents and was no longer a child. He simply wished to have the closeness of their relationship legalized and publicized.208 On Tuesday, April 14, a week after her death, Comte made a visit to de Vaux’s tomb for the first time – a visit he would make every Wednesday until he died.209 The next day Comte sent the Maries a list of the various objects that he had lent to de Vaux and wanted returned to him. These objects were crucial to the “cult” of his “cherished souvenirs” that he had begun constructing in 1845 and now considered to be his sole source of consolation.210 Perhaps he thought regaining possession of his belongings – that he had shared with de Vaux – would give him some sense of closure. The items on the list included linens and handkerchiefs marked C.M. (Caroline Massin), a trestle bed, a nightlight, a crystal bowl, and twenty-six volumes of books. He also wanted the seven letters that he had written to de Vaux in March; they were not in the box that he had taken April 1 because they did not fit.211 Finally, he requested the manuscript of Willelmine. This dry, rather bureaucratic letter only reinforced Max and Madame Marie’s conviction that he was abnormal.212 207 208 209

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De Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 165. Comte even mentions his scheme in the Cat´echisme positiviste of 1852. See Cat´echisme, 40. He later often combined a trip to her grave with a visit to the Church of St. Paul. Henry Dix Hutton, Comte, the Man and the Founder: Personal Recollections (London: Reeves & Turner, 1891), 10. Comte to Mrs. Austin, May 26, 1846, CG, 4:13. See also Comte, “Troisi`eme Confession annuelle,” June 25, 1848, CG, 4:158. These were the letters of March 1, 4, 5, 9, 11, 17, and 18. He had the last letter he had written her, the one from March 20. Perhaps it had been lying close to her bed, and he had taken it. De Vaux may have put the other letters in her papers, where her mother found them after her death. Look at the note that Comte glued to the inside cover of the glove box, which is in the Maison d’Auguste Comte. Max decided that Comte was indeed suffering from, in d’Aguair’s words, “one of those attacks of madness, which people said were habitual with him.” Statement of d’Aguair, reproduced in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 405. Comte could hardly have been

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Madame Marie quickly satisfied all of Comte’s demands for his possessions except for the return of his seven letters and the manuscript.213 She was “more than shocked” when she read the letters from a “man who presents himself as a philosopher and a moralist.” They revealed the secret of Comte’s youthful affair with a married woman and his illegitimate daughter, his sexual desires for de Vaux, his plans to adopt her, and his vicious hatred of Massin. Though insulted by his comments about members of the family, she was at least relieved to see that de Vaux had not been taken in completely by the conniving, hypocritical Comte and had “remained pure.” She refused to give Comte the letters or manuscript because they were all that she had of her daughter’s “heart.”214 After hearing Comte’s pleas, Captain Marie begged her to relent, but without success.215 Madame Marie’s viewpoint is evident in a “Response to Monsieur Comte,” which she entrusted to Lenoir to give to Comte: Thirty-one years of care, devotion, and sacrifice give me the imprescriptible rights to the dear remains that Mr. Comte claims. They will stay in the family without correction or publication; our feelings do not need the joys of pride. I will likewise keep all the papers that belonged to my daughter. They are indispensable to me in the interest of her memory. The justification that Mr. Comte himself has chosen for his unspeakable behavior and for his offenses against us give me the right to guard against the impudence and violence that attack his mind.216

Comte denounced Madame Marie’s “maternal tyranny.”217 It was clear to him that she did not want her daughter to succeed in the literary area where she had not done well.218 She would certainly never want to see in print the story that she had always hated because de Vaux seemed to criticize her as a mother. Her view prevailed, in

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surprised when they deliberately did not tell him when Clotilde’s coffin was to be moved from its temporary grave to its permanent one. See Comte’s handwritten note glued to the inside cover of the glove box, MAC. After years of effort, Comte’s disciples finally persuaded descendants of de Vaux to give the letters and manuscript to the archives of the Maison d’Auguste Comte in 1928. Soon afterwards, they published a facsimile of the manuscript. See Paulo E. de Berrˆedo Carneiro, introduction to CG, 3:LXXXV, n. 2. Madame Marie to Comte, n.d. (April 1846?), MAC. Comte prided himself on having helped de Vaux in “the conception and elaboration” of this work. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:78. Madame Marie, R´eponse a` Monsieur Comte, no date, MAC. See excerpt in de Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 398. Note of Comte written on letter from Madame Marie to Comte, April 26, 1846, CG, volume three, note CDXX, 422. See Comte’s comment on her “monstrous literary rivalry.” Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:78.

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Comte’s eyes, because Captain Marie, enervated by “sexual abuses,” that is, by excessive sexual activity during his youth, was too weak to exert his authority as “head of the family.”219 Comte refused to have anything more to do with any of the family members. Yet in the fall of 1846, he was delighted when Captain Marie came by his apartment unannounced; this visit gave him the chance to talk about de Vaux once again.220 Yet for the most part Comte wished to be left alone. One reason was that two weeks after de Vaux’s death, “philosophical ideas” pertaining to the Syst`eme suddenly and “spontaneously” began to come to him.221 Although at first he felt too paralyzed by grief to write, he was excited that after almost eighteen months of struggling to focus on his work, he now could do so. As he told de Vaux in one of his last letters to her, his love for her was integral to his work. “To become a perfect philosopher, I lacked above all a . . . profound and pure passion that would make me appreciate the affective side of humanity.”222 Meeting her marked the beginning of his “second life.”223 On Sunday, April 12, 1846, he decided to throw out what he had written in August and September 1845 and start the book anew.224 He believed that he had considered the emotions only in a secondary manner in the Cours; he would make them dominate the Syst`eme, which would systematize “all human existence around its true universal center: affection!”225 Just as he believed that his emotions increasingly influenced his intellectual development, he argued that “affection must increasingly dominate speculation to lead to a true systematization of human existence.”226 Whereas in his “first 219 220

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Comte to Lenoir, May 9, 1846, CG, 3:11. Comte, “Deuxi`eme Confession annuelle,” June 2, 1847, CG, 4:115. Comte also saw him by chance at de Vaux’s grave in November 1852. See Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:95. After Max and Madame Marie refused to give to Comte the papers he sought, the Captain broke with them in 1846. He eventually moved to rue de Penthi`evre and died in February 1855. The other members of the family moved from the rue Pav´ee to the rue du Petit-Bourbon in the same neighborhood. Madame Marie died on February 8, 1848. Max became a mathematics instructor. He eventually obtained the posts of r´ep´etiteur and admissions examiner at the Ecole Polytechnique – the posts Comte had held. See Comte to Captain Marie, October 10, 1846, CG, 4:63; Th´erive, Clotilde de Vaux, 185; J. N. d’Aguair to Maximilien Marie, April 4, 1850; Bertrand, “Souvenirs acad´emiques,” 547. Comte to Lenoir, April 22, 1846, CG, 3:374. Comte to de Vaux, March 11, 1846 CG, 3:354. Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:93. See Comte’s original notations on his personal notes regarding the time he spent writing his works at the Maison d’Auguste Comte. Parts of these notes are reproduced in Laffitte, ed., “Du Temps dans le travail intellectuel,” 442. Comte to de Vaux, March 11, 1846 CG, 3:354. Comte to Barbot de Chement, October 29, 1846, CG, 4:61.

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life,” he had encouraged the mind’s influence on the heart, the “second part” of his “philosophic career” would address chiefly the heart, which had to enlighten the mind.227 In this way, he would make sure that “positivism surpasses every religion in moral efficacy as much as it does in intellectual aptitude.”228 The gap between the needs of the mind and those of the heart would be finally overcome. Comte set to work to develop this moral aspect of his philosophy and eventually ascribed to de Vaux his interest in creating a new science, that of morality, as well as a new religion.229 As was his wont, he analyzed the different stages of his life and determined that “the age of private passions” was over for him. He would be henceforth completely preoccupied by his “social mission,” which would only partly compensate him for his loss but at least would prevent him from committing suicide. In a sense, Comte sought to sublimate his “noble” feelings of melancholy and to direct his energy to his work in the “service of humanity.”230 He presented this decision dramatically as a new development for him, as a kind of resurrection, but in truth he had stated years before that he was devoting himself to humanity because he had found no happiness with Massin.231 By September, he began writing his dedication to de Vaux, which was partly a funeral oration and partly an introduction to the Syst`eme.232 He used the dedication to ensure her immorality; though obscure on this earth, de Vaux did achieve the fame she desired, but not through her work, as she desired, but because of her connection with Comte, who wanted to make their relationship as well-known as the one between his beloved Dante and Beatrice. Indeed, Comte made de Vaux famous chiefly by emphasizing her role as his muse, an approach that robbed her of agency.233 In wallowing in his sorrow, Comte was similar to his contemporaries. Victor Hugo mourned the drowning in 1843 of his daughter, which inspired him to write many of the poems in his Contemplations.234 Comte gave in to his need to publicize his private life, which was already apparent in his infamous preface to the sixth volume of the Cours, written in 1842. In this dedication in the Syst`eme, he announced to the public – both male and 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234

Comte, “Quatri`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 31, 1853, CG, 7:31; Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4:51. Comte to de Vaux, March 11, 1846, CG, 3:355. Comte, Synth`ese subjective ou Syst`eme universel des conceptions propres a` l’´etat normal de l’humanit´e., vol. 1 (Paris, 1856)[hereafter, Synth`ese], 833. Comte to Lenoir, April 22, 1846, CG, 3:374. On the influence of Catholicism, Annie Petit, “Du Catholicisme au positivisme,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52 (1998): 142. He finished the dedication on October 4, 1846. It is reprinted in CG, 4:47–61. Comte, “D´edicace,”CG, 4:47, 55. See also ibid., 61. George Chabert, Un Nouveau Pouvoir spirituel: Auguste Comte et la religion scientifique au XIXe si`ecle (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2004), 50.

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female – the influence of his female “colleague” on his development. He used himself as an example to demonstrate concretely women’s impact on men. He stressed the nobility, purity, and chastity of their relationship – a relationship that he claimed made both of them more perfect beings. Pretending to address her, Comte wrote, “Your salutary influence spontaneously rendered me more affectionate toward my friends and more indulgent toward my enemies, gentler to my inferiors, and more subservient to my superiors.”235 She not only purified his affections, but broadened his thoughts and ennobled his conduct. He prided himself on his great energy, which was, thanks to her, more efficacious because he had learned moderation. Thus he claimed that all aspects of his character had blossomed under her guidance. His suffering from her death had also served to make him a “better” person “in all regards.”236 He was thus a better philosopher with greater authority to ensure the development “in all senses of the grandeur of man.”237 Claiming not to care about critics’ views of his writings, he affirmed that he derived his greatest satisfaction from improving his “own moral nature” and exercising “the same influence on many others.”238 Yet subsequent events would show that he had not changed much, if at all. Indeed, in the dedication, he punished in his usual vindicative way those whom he despised. He denounced de Vaux’s mother just as he had criticized Arago and other “enemies” in the Cours. Writing the dedication was a catharsis. By October, when he completed it, he had overcome his insomnia, convulsions, and stomach troubles and reached a “new situation of moral equilibrium.”239 By July 1847, he wrote to a friend that the period of personal mourning was over for him.240 He prided himself on his stoicism, that is, his ability to “dominate” his “irrevocable” sadness.241 Indeed, he recommended that everyone practice resignation, for there were many evils humans could not eliminate.242 Yet he worked hard at keeping 235 237

238 239

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Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4: 49. 236 Comte to Lenoir, April 22, 1846, CG, 3:374. Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4:54. See also his “D´edicace” du Syst`eme de politique positive, where he claims that giving details of his private life will give humanity the “moral guarantees it must . . . require from true philosophers,” CG, 4:48. Comte to Alix Comte, November 10, 1848, CG, 4:206. Comte to Barbot de Chement, October 29, 1846, CG, 4:70–71. On Comte’s convulsions, which lasted six months, see Comte to Lewes, April 7, 1845, CG, 4:113. On October 22, Comte invited Laffitte to dine with him in order to read the dedication. Laffitte persuaded him to omit one note that could lead to unwanted “personal discussions.” See Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886): 184–5. See comment from Modeste-Etienne Claudel to Comte, July 7, 1847, MAC. Comte to Mill, May 6, 1846, CG, 4:7. 242 Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4:58.

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the influence of de Vaux strong in his life. Every year he wrote an “annual confession” to her, telling her his thoughts on contemporary events, which were both public and private, his feelings about her and those around him, and his progress in advancing their joint cause of moral regeneration.243 His notion of a confession was inspired by Rousseau’s Confessions, but he intended to display his private life in public in order to underscore his altruism, not his depravity and egoism, as he thought Rousseau had done.244 Comte fought off complete despair by taking pride in his own courage, decisiveness, energy, and virtue.245 He now felt especially prepared to display the “moral efficacy” of positivism. He began to lead an even more austere life and rarely left his apartment. He said prayers in de Vaux’s memory in the morning, afternoon, and evening.246 During his time of worship he focused in 243

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There are eleven annual confessions, written from 1846 to 1856. Comte labelled them from A through K. They are included in his Testament. Comte wrote one every year to honor Sainte-Clotilde’s feast day and thereby his beloved Clotilde herself. He thus called some of them his “Sainte-Clotilde.” Reciting them at her gravesite, he usually wrote them on the feast day, June 2, but in later years he composed them sometimes later, in August or on the date of his feast day, October 12, because he was busy writing his philosophical works in the summer. He eventually decided to write them always on his feast day to show her influence on his life. The first Sainte-Clotilde was written to de Vaux on June 2, 1845, when she was still alive. Its formal title was the “Lettre philosophique sur la comm´emoration sociale.” The second “Sainte-Clotilde” was probably the Dedication of the Syst`eme, written in October 1846. It was probably the first “Confession annuelle,” because the Dedication is the first “Confession” inserted into the Testament. (However, there is much confusion regarding this first confession. Some of Comte’s testamentary executors agreed about the Dedication, but others maintained that the first “Confession annuelle” was the “Lettre philosophique sur le mariage” of June 1845; Carneiro found in 1829 an envelope among Comte’s belongings which originally contained all the confessions. A list written by Comte on the cover suggests that the first one was writen June 2, 1846, but Carneiro did not see it in the envelope and could not find it in the archives.) The third “Sainte-Clotilde” is the second “Confession annuelle,” written June 2, 1847, and so forth. Comte may have called his annual memoir about his life his “confession” because of his great admiration for Rousseau’s Confessions, especially the “freshness of emotions and descriptions” that pervaded its “best pages.” On Rousseau, see Comte to Hadery, September 11, 1854, CG, 7:261. See also Carneiro, introduction to CG, xx; “Confessions annuelles,” MAC; Comte, “Onzi`eme Confession annuelle,” October 12, 1856, CG, 8:309; Testament (1896 ed.), the green insert VIIbis . Laffitte erred when he proclaimed that the first “Confession annuelle” was written in June 1847. See Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886): 186, 190. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” April 29, 1848, MAC. Comte found courage to be one of the most important characteristics in a person. See Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 29, 1846, CG, 4:87. On Rousseau, see Chabert, Un Nouveau Pouvoir spirituel, 40. Comte had expressed his appreciation of prayers as early as 1844 in his correspondance with Sarah Austin. See Comte to Madame Austin, April 4, 1844, CG, 2:245–6. He instituted some morning prayers as early as Monday, June 9, 1845. In April 1846, he wrote more prayers and revised them in 1849, 1853, 1855, and 1857. By the end of his

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a fetishistic way on the medallion of hair she had given him.247 As Jay Winter has pointed out, under stress, people tend to go back to “pagan or pre-logical” patterns of behavior.248 Besides being chaste, he continued to refrain from drinking wine or other forms of alcohol. He drank only milk for breakfast and ate a little meat and some vegetables for dinner. Meat, he said, was important for his cerebral processes. The reduction of his food intake by half also served to calm his stomach. Giving up dessert, he finished his evening meal with a bit of dry toast to remind himself of the unfortunate of the world. The one day a month that Bliaux went out, he dined at a restaurant on the rue de l’Ancienne-Com´edie, eating soup and chicken and leaving a good tip. He never worked at night and usually went to bed early. Every year he gave money to the poor, trying to follow the Catholic tradition of the tithe.249 Indeed, he received from time to time letters from people in need, who asked him for money to help them. He did not mind being generous, especially because he hated economizing, a trait that annoyed Massin, who was very worried about his financial situation.250

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life, he spent an hour every morning, twenty minutes every afternnon, and half an hour every evening reciting them, partly in front of the chair, the “altar,” on which de Vaux had sat when she visited him and in front of the flowers she had made for him. He created at least four prayers in her memory. Most of them consisted of a blend of passages from their correspondence, their conversations, and his readings of literature. See Comte, “Eternels Souvenirs p´eriodiques d’un vertueux amour,” “Souvenirs de l’incomparable ann´ee,” May 27, 1846, MAC; packet of “Pri`eres quotidiennes,” in Comte’s handwriting, MAC; Comte to Laffitte, September 25, 1850, CG, 5:201; Comte to Profumo, March 7, 1851, CG, 6:29; Comte, “Huiti`eme Confession annuelle,” August 14, 1853, CG, 7:98. He reprinted the prayers in his Testament (1896 ed.), 81–99. Testament (1896 ed.), 12. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 65. Comte to Mill, June 27, 1845, CG, 3:51; Joseph Lonchampt, Pr´ecis de la vie et des e´crits d’Auguste Comte (Paris, 1889), 79–80. Lonchampt claimed Comte gave up his usual forms of entertainment as well: walks, dinners, and the opera. Yet Comte continued going to the opera (though only once a week on Thursdays), taking walks, and dining with friends. His favorite places to walk, according to Laffitte were Sceaux, Chˆatenay, la Vall´ee aux Loups, and the Bois de Verri`eres. He often gave money to beggars during his outings. See Comte to Laffitte, March 2, 1848, CG, 4:140; Comte to Jacquemin, March 24, 1848, CG, 4:144; Comte’s subscription for the 1847 to 1848 season, notice from the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien, July 30, 1847, MAC; Comte to Captain Marie, October 10, 1846, CG, 4:63; 34e Circulaire de Pierre Laffitte, January 2, 1882, MAC; Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” RO 17 (September/November 1886): 205. Comte gave eighty-four francs to Sophie and various employees of his friends, such as Blainville, for New Year’s gifts in 1848. See manuscript in Comte’s handwriting, “Etrennes de 1848,” MAC; Deroisin, Comte, 92–93. See Philippe Legros to Comte, May 13, 1847; Lelerret to Comte, Dec. 13, 1848; Bastide to Comte, August 2, 1846, MAC; Deroisin, Comte,104–5. Massin confided to Gustave d’Eichthal, Comte’s former friend, that she could not bear to watch her husband in his

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The point of all these measures was to improve his private life as a means of developing his public life, a life devoted to others. Through de Vaux, he believed he had learned to love humanity, not simply to place it at the center of knowledge as he had recommended in the Cours.251 Now he not only knew intellectually the importance of social considerations but understood emotionally that happiness came from depending on others. Comte maintained that there was now the utmost solidarity between the “progression of my highest thoughts and that of my dearest sentiments.”252 Yet he no longer cared as much about cultivating the mind, which he believed was too much of a preoccupation of modern man. He wrote, “I am taken less and less by the simple satisfactions of the mind, and the union of hearts seems to me increasingly superior to those of intelligences.”253 He also claimed to prefer “a person motivated by good sentiments and distinguished by good actions (even when he/she does not know how to read) than the most scholarly egoist all the European academies could offer.”254 Simple pleasures such as gardening no longer seemed inane to him, although he did not engage in such pursuits.255 In the years to come, he would seek to express greater appreciation of his friends and family in the belief that sincere attachments led to greater happiness and self-improvement.256 Following the path of the romantic poets and novelists of his days, he claimed that the “cultivation of the heart” was of utmost importance.257

251 252 253 254 255 256 257

“sad” financial situation and that she could not cut back on her expenses to help him. She was worried that Comte had compromised himself, something she would never do. She asked d’Eichthal to find out from the liberal writer and editor Marc-Antoine Jullien (or perhaps his son, who was also involved in journalism) whether he had any work for Comte. When she found out that Jullien had misled her and there was none, she lamented that she could not figure out the key to success. See Massin to Gustave d’Eichthal, April 13, 1846 and May 6, 1846, Fonds d’Eichthal Ms. 13750, items 243 and 247, Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal. Also see Comte to Mill, May 6, 1846, and September 3, 1846, CG, 4:7, 37. Jullien had written Comte several letters in the 1820s, asking him to read his work on the philosophy of science. See Marc-Antoine Jullien to Comte, November 5,14, 17, MAC. Comte to Alix Comte, October 22, 1848, CG, 4:204. Comte, “D´edicace,” CG, 4:51. Comte to Alix Comte, October 22, 1848, CG, 4:205. Comte to Alix Comte, May 12, 1849, CG, 5:20. Comte to Alix Comte, February 19, 1849, CG, 5:8–9. Comte to Alix Comte, October 22, 1848, CG, 4:204. Comte to Alix Comte, November 10, 1848, CG, 4:206.

Chapter 5

Pain and Recognition

How could a doctrine that clearly highlights the natural participation of every existence in the harmony of the universe tend to isolate us more from the general milieu? . . . I feel every day that my philosophical convictions make me increasingly sympathize with everyone who surrounds me. Although I am very isolated in my daily life, it is only because of personal taste and a sort of spontaneous routine; my philosophy combats them . . . and certainly does away with every nuance of misanthropy. Comte to Barbot de Chement, 1846

more disappointme nt According to J. Mar`es, manic-depressives become extremely melancholy or maniacal after the death of someone they love.1 Indeed, right after de Vaux’s funeral, Comte began to deal with a sadness that he said was “without equal” and would last forever.2 Yet matters shortly became worse. About a month after her death, Comte experienced more grief. One of his oldest and closest friends, Charles Bonnin, died on May 27, 1846 at the age of seventy-six. He prided himself on being Comte’s first disciple.3 Indeed, he had been corresponding with Comte since 1829 and for years had joined him and Lenoir once a month at Blainville’s home for dinner.4 A radical publicist and 1 2 3

4

Mar`es, “Maniaque d´epressive,” 704. Comte to d’Aguiar, April 11, 1846, CG, 3:366. Comte to Laffitte, July 28, 1849, CG, 5:41; Bonnin to Comte, September 25, 1841, MAC. Bonnin wrote L´egislation constitutionnelle, ou Recueil des constitutions franc¸aises: Pr´ec´ed´ees des D´eclarations des droits de l’homme et du citoyen publi´ees en Am´erique et en France, published in 1820. Comte referred to Bonin in his first letter to Proudhon: Comte to P.-J. Proudhon, August 5, 1852, reprinted in Pierre Haubtmann, La Philosophie sociale de P.-J. Proudhon (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 1980), 288. Laffitte, ed., “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 197; Bonnin to Comte, October 5, 1842. See also Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 13, 1843, CG, 2:206; Bonnin to Comte, December 10, 1829, MAC. The letter concerns Comte’s series of articles on Broussais. Bonnin was also a friend of Gustave d’Eichthal, who had been one of Comte’s earliest and closest disciples but joined the Saint-Simonians in 1829. D’Eichthal dined with Bonnin in October 1843 and told him to give Comte his regards. He hoped to see his former mentor, but Comte, still bitter about the breakup in 1829, was not eager for such a meeting. See Bonnin to Comte, October 10, 1843.

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friend of Lazare Carnot, Bonnin demonstrated the “profound affinity” that could exist between the “pure spirit of the revolution” and positivism.5 Comte always appreciated this leftist’s support.6 Bonnin praised Comte’s articles on Broussais in 1829, heard him lecture on cosmogony at the Academy of Sciences in 1835, and urged him to refer in his “Personal Preface” to his 1826 attack of madness to disarm his critics.7 Greatly saddened by Bonnin’s death, Comte continued for several years to keep in touch with his widow, Antoinette, whom he found very self-centered. Later, he grieved when their daughter died at the age of thirty-two. Massin had suspected in 1843 that Antoinette had her eye on Comte in order to obtain “beautiful dresses” and become a “grande dame.” She warned him that the young woman was ridiculing him behind his back.8 Brushing aside their rivalry, Comte indeed seemed to take to her; he regarded her death as a grave loss to positivism because, like de Vaux, she seemed pure and eager to embrace his system.9 Because of the death of those close to him and his need for privacy to grieve and to go over his memories, Comte felt increasingly isolated.10 This feeling of solitude was aggravated by his estrangement from Lenoir, who used to visit him most evenings, but since August 1846 had been almost completely prohibited from doing so.11 The three times he had seen Comte, the philosopher showed his displeasure by speaking “almost in monosyllables.”12 In early October, Lenoir begged Comte to explain his reluctance to see him. Comte replied, “Our relations are no longer the same, and I dare to add that it is especially your fault.”13 He accused Lenoir of not having 5 6

7 8 9

10 11 12 13

Comte to Barbot de Chement, October 29, 1846, CG, 4:70. Bonnin and Comte discussed a wide range of topics. They even joked about the cowardice of Lafayette, whom Bonnin had known during the French Revolution. Comte confirmed his opinion because he remembered what Saint-Simon had said about Lafayette, whom he knew in the American Revolution: Lafayette showed character only when balls were whizzing about his head. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” June 18, 1848, MAC. He also encouraged Comte to persist in using the word “sociology” instead of “social physics.” Bonnin to Comte, March 26, 1843. Caroline Massin to Comte, 1843, MAC (no month). Comte to Laffitte, July 28, 1849, CG, 5:41; announcement of the death of CharlotteVictorine Bonnin, July 21, 1849 MAC; Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:95; Syst`eme, 4:50–51. Comte to Barbot de Chement, October 29, 1846, CG, 4:70. Lenoir was also a friend of Bonnin. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:74. Lenoir to Comte, October 25, 1846, MAC. Comte to Lenoir, October 11, 1846, CG, 4:64. Comte called him a “friend without energy.” Comte, “Eternels souvenirs p´eriodiques d’un vertueux amour,” “Souvenirs de l’incomparable ann´ee,” September 14, 1846, MAC. See also Lenoir to Comte, October 10, 1846, MAC.

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been sufficiently aggressive with the Maries, of having secretly taken their side, and thus of having displayed a lack of affection for him. Lenoir told Comte that his words were “very hard, very cruel.” He challenged Comte: “If you are really a strong, energetic man with a solid and virile mind, as you consider yourself to be, you will have the force to hear me today.” Shocked that Comte had forgotten all that he had done for him, he reminded him of the “constant care” he had given him after Massin’s departure in 1842 and during de Vaux’s illness. Lenoir also defended his actions with the Marie family and his meeting with Aguiar and Ch´erest, which he explained was “only an official interview” and lasted no more than a half hour. Lenoir continued, They spoke with sadness and moderation; I was struck by the moderation of this doctor Ch´erest, whom, however, you had offended rather gravely. They did not condemn your sentiment, do you understand that? They did not censure it in itself; but they revealed how the M . . . family complained, first that you had wanted to alienate their daughter and sister from them, then that in the very last days of her life you had ignored all the rules of etiquette, and [finally] that you had voiced the most exorbitant imprecations against several persons and used wounding expressions in several circumstances. Ultimately, these sins alleged that all that went on had compromised the family.

Lenoir claimed that he had defended Comte against these charges and prevented the family, especially Max, from harming him. Comte should remember that he had “many enemies”and there were “a great number of people who did not like him.”14 In contrast, Lenoir greatly enjoyed Comte’s company and was devastated to be treated so coldly. Lenoir’s words, like those of Massin and Valat several years before, did not move Comte, who still felt betrayed and disappointed. Comte replied, “For a long time, I believed you were only intellectually superficial: I have learned, at my own expense, that you are even more [superficial] in matters of the heart. . . . As mobile in your sympathies as you are floating in your convictions, you are too much everyone’s friend to feel a strong and profound affection toward a single person.”15 In late October 1846, he refused to receive Lenoir ever again and relieved him of his obligation to give Massin her alimony every four months.16 Massin had troubles living from one payment 14 15 16

Lenoir to Comte, October 25, 1846, MAC. Comte to Lenoir, October 28, 1846, CG, 4:67. Lenoir had taken the money to Caroline Massin every trimester from November 10, 1842 to July 24, 1846. Littr´e started doing this chore January 23, 1847 and stopped July 9, 1852. Then the following pairs took turns: Jean-Franc¸ois-Eug`ene Robinet and Edouard Foley, Hippolyte Phil´emon Deroisin and Pierre Laffitte, Laffitte and Foley, and Laffitte

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to another, especially after 1846, when Comte reduced his yearly allowance to her from three thousand to two thousand francs. To Comte, Lenoir seemed overly concerned about not only her monetary situation but also her health.17 In addition, having lived transparently “as a true philosopher,” Comte worried about the secrets he had confided to him. Comte gave Lenoir a warning: “I hope you will never take advantage of these intimate revelations. . . . No one knows better than I how far I am from being perfect. Nevertheless, considering everything, I believe I am able to represent with regard to the heart as well as to the mind . . . a sort of type, not ideal, but real.”18 Comte feared that Lenoir might destroy his public image.19 For his part, Lenoir was bitter to be recompensed in this manner for having tried to help Comte even when he had wronged the Maries.20 Besides Mill and Lenoir, other friends disappointed Comte. Either they did not sympathize with his misfortunes, or they refused to accede to his request for financial assistance. His elderly friend J. Captier, whom he had known since he was a young boy in Montpellier, gave him only one thousand francs instead of the three thousand he had originally offered him.21 Likewise, Blainville had promised Comte two thousand francs but gave him only five hundred in late 1845.22 From this point on, Blainville’s relations with Comte deteriorated, especially after he published a new book that apparently belittled positivism.23 Thus Comte complained about the “unexpected lukewarmness of almost all my friends.”24 Another source of sorrow was his difficult relationship with his family. Comte had not communicated with his father and sister since

17

18 19

20 21

22 23 24

and Joseph Lonchampt. The last payment was June 27, 1857. See the receipts signed by Massin, MAC; letters from Massin to Laffitte, March 29, 1853, and June 29, 1855, MAC. Massin to Comte, November 7, 1847, MAC; Lenoir to Comte, October 10, 26, 1846, MAC; Comte to Lenoir, October 11, 28, 1846, CG, 4:65, 68; Comte to Massin, January 10, 1847, CG, 4:94–5. Comte to Lenoir, October 28, 1846, CG, 4:68. It was not until 1851 that Comte and Lenoir met together for a couple of hours, after the former sent him a copy of the first volume of the Syst`eme. Lenoir called him “the ardent friend of humanity,” and Comte remarked that their “long visit” was “special.” Lenoir to Comte, with note of Comte written at the top, July 7, 1851, MAC. Statement of d’Aguair, reproduced in Rouvre, L’Amoureuse Histoire, 405. Comte to Captier, March 22, 1846, CG, 3:363–4; J. Captier to Comte, July 10, 1846, MAC; Comte to Captier, July 8, 1848, CG, 4:22. See Comte’s reaction to Captier’s death, Comte to Ir´en´ee Captier (Captier’s son), January 21, 1852, CG, 6:222. Comte had still not repaid his debt when he died and asked his disciples to do so. Testament (1896 ed.), 13. Captier was in the cloth business and knew Comte’s family in Montpellier. Comte to Blainville, December 31, 1845, CG, 3:260–61; Blainville to Comte, December 30, 1845, and January 1, 1846, MAC. Comte stopped going to Blainville’s monthly dinners in December 1848. Comte to Magnin, December 2, 1848, CG, 4:210. Comte to Mill, September 3, 1846, CG, 4:35.

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1838, when he accused them of treating his wife poorly. (His mother had died in 1837.) Though Massin never forgave them, she urged Comte in 1843 to have a reconciliation with his father. “He will not live forever: Avoid having regrets.”25 Yet Comte first felt he had to deal with Alix, who he believed was trying to alienate his father from him in order to get a larger share of their inheritance.26 He did not actually mind letting her have more inheritance because he knew she was a spinster with no other resources and she had taken care of their father for years. What he resented was his father’s claim to have no money, which was patently false, and his sister’s active campaign to get more inheritance by making herself the sole object of “paternal tenderness.”27 Besides paranoia, sibling rivalry was at work in preventing a reconciliation. Indeed, Louis Comte felt compelled in June 1843 to write a statement refuting Comte’s allegations that he was rich, that he had disinherited him, and that Alix had caused the death of their brother Adolphe. These “calumnies” were “revolting.”28 In late May 1846, eight years after his rupture with his family, Comte’s cousin Victorine Boyer informed him that his father had been recently fired from his job as head clerk and treasurer in the tax collector’s office of the department of H´erault.29 Seventy-years old, he had extremely poor eyesight that made it impossible for him to keep the books. He himself admitted in another context that he could “not make out a single word.”30 Two years before, he had even hired someone to help him at the office. But Louis Comte rejected his growing blindness as a good reason for dismissal. 25 26

27

28 29 30

Caroline Massin to Comte, April 18, 1843, MAC. Louis Comte had written a will in January 13, 1828 in which he wanted deducted from his son’s inheritance the money he had paid for costs relating to his illness in 1826 and other advances. See Louis Comte, “Testament olographe,” January 13, 1828, p. 274, N.a.fr. 10794, BN. Alix Comte wrote Auguste a letter in 1843 to explain that she was favored in the testament of their father because her health did not permit her to work. She also attempted a reconciliation. She sneaked out of the house in October 1843 to surprise Comte at his hotel when he came to Montpellier on his examination tour. She threw herself around his neck, begging him to see their father, but he refused because she had still not apologized to his wife. See also Alix Comte to Auguste Comte, April 1843, in “Lettres d’Alix Comte a` son fr`ere Auguste Comte,” ed. Pierre Laffitte, RO, 3d ser., 2 (May 1910): 87; Alix Comte to Robinet, March 25, 1860, MAC.; Alix Comte to Audiffrent, August 19, 1868, MAC. Comte to Victorine Boyer, July 16, 1846, CG, 4:25. Comte’s father defended himself by explaining that he did not have as much money as he appeared to have because the money belonged to others who gave it to him to make deals. Victorine Boyer to Comte, August 16, 1846, in “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Deux Lettres d’Auguste Comte a` Victorine Boyer sa cousin, et a` M. Fautrier son cousin,” ed. Pierre Laffitte, RO, 3d ser., 3 (May 1, 1911): 181. Copy of statement of Louis Comte, June 4, 1843, p. 276, N.a.fr. 10794, BN. Audiffrent made the copy. Victorine Boyer to Comte, May 29, 1846, in “Deux Lettres d’Auguste Comte,” 178–9. Louis Comte to Auguste Comte, June 5, 1846, CG, 4:223.

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To publicize his case, he wrote a M´emoire justificatif, a thirty-page statement that he printed and distributed. It bears a striking resemblance to the “Personal Preface” that his son, Auguste, had inserted in the sixth volume of the Cours.31 Perhaps the “Personal Preface” served as inspiration, or the two Comtes had a similar paranoid personality that admitted no wrongdoing and demanded public rectification. Just as Auguste presented himself in his preface as the victim of a large-scale conspiracy against him, Louis Comte made himself out to be a pawn in the political struggles of the corrupt regime of Louis-Philippe. According to his statement, which was full of sarcastic, caustic remarks about liberalism, he was dismissed by Roulleaux, the new prefect of the department of the H´erault, for continuing to support the Bourbons, who had lost the throne in the Revolution of 1830. Mr. Roulleaux [the prefect] accuses me of not doing anything to ensure the success of the election of the ministerial candidate [the candidate of the government], of trying on the contrary to influence the opinions of the tax collectors in electoral and political matters, . . . and of opposing the advancement of those who are most devoted to him.32

Roulleaux had allegedly been eager to dismiss Louis Comte since 1844, when he blamed him after his candidate for the Chamber of Deputies had lost the election by one vote. The minister of the interior, who was in charge of the elections, also desired Louis Comte’s “destitution.”33 Yet Louis Comte claimed he never spoke to anyone in the office about his legitimist politics and simply did his job in an honest, conscientious manner, as he had had for the past forty-seven years. Roulleaux was “hard” and full of “brutality”; he was a truly “implacable calumniator” and “implacable persecutor.” In fact, Louis Comte felt he had to defend himself in a public manner, for he feared that Roulleaux would have him arrested on charges of sedition. Just as Auguste openly described private matters in his preface, Louis made reference to his daily routines to let “the public . . . judge if this is the kind of life of a conspirator.”34 After hearing of his father’s troubles, Auguste Comte wrote him a very sympathetic letter, telling him that he had suffered from “an equivalent iniquity” two years before, when he lost his main job at the Ecole Polytechnique. Yet he tried to minimize his own pain and think of his father’s: The shameful act that I was just informed of affects me far more than the one of which I am momentarily the personal victim. I truly regret 31 32 34

Louis Comte even made references to the Barber of Seville, an opera that his son loved. Louis Comte, M´emoire justificatif (Paris, 1846), 7. 33 Ibid., 9. Ibid., 7, 9, 14, 16, 17.

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that my present financial position and especially the sad state of our mutual relations do not allow me to come soon to show my dear and worthy father the filial role that I take with regard to his misfortune and my strong desire to comfort him as much as it is in my power to do so.35

Comte’s father did not respond graciously. He said it was “very agreeable” to receive a letter from Auguste after eight years of silence, but he expressed his displeasure that his son had not mentioned one word about his sister. “I admit to you frankly that this silence made a far greater impression on me than the loss of my place: what would become of me without your sister?”36 Having hoped for an “affectionate greeting” from his father, especially because he felt the need for his love in the midst of his sadness stemming from de Vaux’s death, Comte was “cruelly surprised” by his father’s coldness.37 He had not seen the need to refer to his sister because he was focusing solely on his father’s grief. It was clear to him that his father strongly preferred Alix to him and had no interest at all in his own loss of employment. All hope for a reconciliation with his family vanished. Comte immediately wrote on the back of his father’s letter “Resolved . . . not to respond at least until the arrival . . . of a letter that is less unjust and less shocking in all respects.”38 He wrote a letter relaying his disappointment to his cousin, Victorine Boyer, who was to let Louis Comte read it. Comte felt more alone than ever. Though he was pleased to receive a rare letter from his old nurse from Montpellier in January 1847, her pointed reference to Louis Comte’s desire for a reunion must have pained him.39 me ntor ship To offset these losses and disappointments, Comte increasingly acted as a mentor to young men. Many were connected with the Ecole Polytechnique, where he had touched the lives of many students. He had examined and/or taught almost 3,000 young men before 1848. Many of them attended other schools after their graduation and spread positivist ideas in these places. These institutions included the Ecole des Ponts et Chauss´ees, Ecole d’Artillerie et du G´enie de Metz, and 35 36 37 38 39

Comte to Louis Comte, June 2, 1846, CG, 4:15, 16. Louis Comte to Auguste Comte, June 2, 1846, CG, 4:222. Comte to Victorine Boyer, July 16, 1846, CG, 4:23, 24. Comte, Note on back of letter from Louis Comte, June 10, CG, 4:222. Franc¸oise Jourdan to Comte, January 7, 1847, MAC; Comte to Jourdan, January 13, 1847, CG, 4:98. See also Auguste Jourdan to Comte, September 28, 1846. He too urged a “reconciliation.”

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the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures.40 Comte was an adviser to many Ecole Polytechnique students, who became his followers. One was Maximilien Marie, but after the death of his sister, they no longer communicated. Now, especially because his career at the Ecole Polytechnique was increasingly tenuous, Comte began to gather around him more diligently a group of chiefly younger men (and some women) who could be his followers. Despite his isolation, he fancied himself to be “extremely sociable and very likable [ fort sympathique],” and he felt a “profound need for openness.” He enjoyed the role of “spiritual father,” because, extending the role he played with de Vaux, he felt obliged to give “spiritual care to everyone.”41 He welcomed the exchange of ideas and feelings with younger individuals, which he felt was difficult sometimes with men his own age, who challenged him more readily or disappointed him for intellectual or financial reasons. A number of these young men did not like their parents, especially their fathers, and turned to him for counsel. The attention that they lavished on him gratified his ego. His correspondence with them offers a glimpse of a nurturing middleaged man, who had no children and was eager to lavish advice about young persons’ choice of a spouse, diet, sexuality, readings, friends, career, and so forth.42 He even made arrangements so that his followers could meet and stay at each other’s homes if they were travelling. In 1851, Comte wrote to one young man the following words: I see myself now surrounded increasingly by an eminent elite of young disciples whose father I could be, although it is hard for me to behave with them other than as an older brother would, owing undoubtedly to my never having had any children. Their noble and sincere affection constitutes both the best compensation for my previous efforts and the surest guarantee of the prolongation of my efforts. Fatally deprived of the principal domestic pleasures, I must attach myself more to the great regenerated family of which I have become the center.43

Indeed, in the early 1850s, Comte decided to devote his evenings to meeting his disciples and friends on a one-to-one basis in order 40

41 42 43

Mirella Larizza shows that before 1848, Comte taught 1,305 students at the Ecole Polytechnique and examined 1,690 boys for admissions to the school. See her superb article, “Le Premier Rayonnement en France des id´ees d’Auguste Comte (1824–1848): Les Milieux, les institutions, les hommes,” in 1848: R´evolutions et mutations au XIX e si`ecle (Paris: Soci´et´e d’histoire de la R´evolution de 1848 et des r´evolutions du XIXe si`ecle,1993), 72–5. She points out that the Ecole Normale was too dominated by Victor Cousin and his influence to be affected by Comte. Comte to Barbot de Chement, October 29, 1846; November 8, 1846; February 27, 1847; February 21, 1848, CG, 4:70, 77,103, 135. Bligni`eres to Comte, March 20, 1853, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1851, CG, 6:68.

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to encourage a level of intimacy that was lost in groups. He would spend almost every day of the week in close company with a different person.44 Many individuals responded favorably to his desire to probe their deepest feelings. One young man who admired Comte was Charles-Gabriel Bernard, nicknamed Thal`es Bernard. Born in Paris in 1821, he was an illegitimate child. His father may have been Joseph Allier, a republican agitator who had written for Le Producteur and had been a great admirer of Comte. Allier abandoned Bernard, his sister, and their working-class mother and fled to Russia, where he died in 1850. As a friend of Allier, Comte met the young man and became a kind of father figure to him.45 In the early 1840s, Bernard and Comte were very close. Lamenting the fact that Comte was often misunderstood, Bernard told him that to appreciate “the treasures of your affections, it was necessary to have lived with you, as I did, Sir, in the most tender intimacy.”46 Bernard sent him opera tickets from time to time, discussed his love affairs with him, and told him of his admiration for the Cours, which offered a clear, rational solution to the “sick condition” of “modern societies.”47 In 1846 he began to work for the ministry of war to support his mother and sister. Yet he was frustrated because he wanted to do something literary. In 1846, he translated from German into French the Dictionnaire mythologique universel of E. Jabobi. He then wanted to quit his job and become a writer. Comte, who by this time had lost one of his positions at the Ecole Polytechnique, advised him not to do so, just as he had told Max not to leave the army to become a scholar: “As for your disgust with your new job, let me persuade you to appreciate it more energetically. It is undoubtedly mechanical: but isn’t that the case with any regular basis of material existence . . . ? You must never think that you can make a living from the noble works to which you devote your essential activity.” What was important was to become less self-centered and “to serve . . . humanity.” Comte wrote, “Live then, my young man, as a worthy member of the great human being, whose moral and mental regeneration can be seriously advanced by your active cooperation. Do not let the real talents with which you are gifted become 44 45

46 47

Comte to Jacquemin, January 9, 1852, CG, 6:219-220. The circumstances under which they met are unclear. Massin mentions in one letter that Bernard met Comte through her. See Massin to Comte, April 23, 1844, MAC. Also see Pierre Laffitte, “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Amis, Protecteurs, Correspondants d’Auguste Comte: Thal`es Bernard,” RO, 2d ser., 15 (September, 1897):191. Laffitte did not include all of Bernard’s letters in this article. Comte remembered Allier’s articles on the spiritual power, which appeared after his own in 1826. Comte to Audiffrent, June 29, 1857, CG, 8:506. There was an Allier who wrote to Comte in 1829, referring to his family problems. See Allier to Comte, March 1829, MAC. Bernard to Comte, March 19, 1850, MAC. Thal`es Bernard to Comte, January 13, 1844, MAC.

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paralyzed by a disastrous melancholy.”48 Brushing away Comte’s advice, Bernard quit his position at the ministry of war and became a tutor of French language and literature.49 He occasionally joined Comte, Lenoir, and Bonnin at Blainville’s house for dinner.50 Another young man who sought Comte’s guidance and occasionally attended dinners with Lenoir and Bonnin was a wealthy young aristocrat, Barbot de Chement. They met originally in 1833 at Duhamel’s house, where Comte tutored him.51 He soon afterwards became one of his “devoted” students at the Ecole Polytechnique.52 They started corresponding in earnest after Barbot de Chement became an artillery officer and started studying the Cours in 1835.53 He remained “almost”obsessed by it for the remainder of his life.54 Comte even brought with him the manuscript of the fifth volume when he visited Barbot de Chement on one of his admissions tours. This volume taught the young man that “we are abandoned children.” He could not wait to read the sixth volume in order to learn how “to face the storms which come from all directions to surround us, us poor young people.”55 To supplement his education in the purely physical sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique and to train him to think in a nonmetaphysical fashion, Come recommended that Barbot de Chement read works on biology and history.56 Comte put him in touch with Blainville, who invited Barbot de Chement to his soir´ees, where he enjoyed meeting the biologist’s friends, including Pol Nicard, Lenoir, Abb´e Maupied, and Dr. Achille-Louis-Franc¸ois Foville.57 (A famous anatomist, neurologist, and psychiatrist, Foville had been a student of Esquirol, who had overseen Comte’s treatment when he was in an insane asylum. It seems that Blainville did not think much of Foville, who worked on improving Gall’s schema of the brain.58 ) After a while, whenever 48

49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56

57 58

Comte to Thal`es Bernard, May 26, 1846, CG, 4:14–15. At one point, Comte tried to get Mill to help him find a suitable position but to no avail. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1842, CG, 2:61. His correspondence with Comte stopped for unknown reasons in 1852. Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions Annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 197. Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, May 10, 1876, MAC. Barbot de Chement to Comte, November 14, 1843, MAC. Between 1835 and 1851, Barbot de Chement received thirty-four letters from Comte, which he later gave to Laffitte. Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, May 10, August 1, December 8, 1876, MAC. Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, July 27, 1886, MAC. Barbot de Chement to Comte, August 24, 1841, MAC. Comte to Barbot de Chement, October 7, 1836, CG, 1:274. Comte often commended him on his pursuit of knowledge. Comte to Barbot de Chement, June 17, 1846, CG, 4:18 Barbot de Chement to Comte, November 24, 1846, MAC. Barbot de Chement also went to several of Blainville’s lectures. Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, July 27, 1886, MAC. Foville and Pinel-Grandchamp had worked as interns at the Salpˆetri`ere hospital, studying localization in the brain. Their studies led to their writing a book on the nervous system

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Barbot de Chement came to Paris, he felt that he was in a “veritable pathological state” if he did not see Comte and Blainville for several days.59 His library at the end of his life included only their works.60 Yet Comte was not at all pleased when Barbot de Chement expressed enthusiasm for Blainville’s new three-volume work on the history of the organic sciences. The books were written with the help of Abb´e Maupied, a Jesuit, who made Blainville appear to be a staunch defender of Catholicism and included comments that Comte found critical of positivism.61 Barbot de Chement felt that Comte was too severe with Blainville. The passages in question were not significant, and the scientist was right to argue that affective life can be fulfilled only through religion.62 Comte, however, rejected Barbot de Chement’s attempt to reconcile science and religion and lamented that he was falling into eclecticism, Victor Cousin’s “doctrine of the powerless.”63 According to Comte, one should not neutralize positivism by marrying it with Catholicism, which it easily surpassed in fulfilling emotional needs and dispensing moral guidance. Indeed, he prided his philosophy on being able to end “the final divorce between the needs of the mind and those of the heart, which has been increasingly aggravated since the end of the Middle Ages.”64 Thus there was no reason for Barbot de Chement or anyone else to have recourse to Catholicism at all. Yet perhaps the young man and Blainville got along because both were Catholics. Indeed, he later related what Blainville had said to him about Comte, “Everything that Mr. Comte says is true, but everything is not there.”65 Besides educational and philosophical matters, Comte also gave Barbot de Chement personal advice. Like Bernard, Barbot de Chement suffered from melancholy and did not like his job.66 He complained that the other soldiers made fun of his “eccentricity.” Comte

59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66

together in 1823, which Comte mentioned in the Cours. Later, when Littr´e wrote Comte’s biography, Foville gave him information about his mental illness. He sent Massin a copy as well, thinking it might interest her because he was her doctor at one point. Foville read and admired Comte’s works but was not a disciple. See Comte, Cours, 1:836, 879; Massin to Comte, April 4, 8, 20, 1844, MAC; Madame Auguste Comte to Charles Robin, n.d., MAC; “Foville” in Alfred Dant`es, Dictionnaire biographique et bibliographique (Paris: Aug. Boyer, 1875), 346. Barbot de Chement to Comte, July 20, 1843 and December 19, 1844, MAC. Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, July 27, 1886, MAC. Published in 1845, the work was entitled Histoire des sciences de l’organisation et de leurs progr`es, comme base de la philosophie, r´edig´ees d’apr`es ses notes et ses lec¸ons faites a` la Sorbonne de 1830 a` 1841, avec les d´eveloppements n´ecessaires et plusieurs additions. Barbot to Laffitte, May 10, 1876, MAC. Comte to Barbot de Chement, December 26, 1846, CG, 4:87. See also Comte to Barbot de Chement, June 17, 1846, CG, 4:16. Comte to Barbot de Chement, June 17, 1846, CG, 3:17. Blainville, as cited by Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, May 10, 1876, MAC. Comte to Barbot de Chement, August 23, 1843, CG, 2:185.

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bluntly told him that he was somewhat at fault in alienating these men.67 The problem was that he lacked energy, resoluteness, and tenderness, and he displayed a “reprehensible aristocratic tendency to scorn those who are not born rich or with a title.”68 Reflecting his own distrust of the upper classes, Comte did not like the way his disciple condemned the common people to accept “conceptions rejected by well-bred persons.”69 Moreover, because Barbot de Chement understood positivism only from an intellectual perspective, he had an “exaggerated sentiment” of his “personal superiority,” which further isolated him from the masses.70 He did not grasp that the proletariat was to be the principal support and object of the social regeneration that he, Comte, was effecting. Barbot de Chement needed to learn to use his intellect to make himself more open to everyone. Comte wrote, “The main goal of the intellect consists . . . of better developing sociability . . . not satisfying a puerile curiosity by stimulating an unsociable vanity.” As in his youth, Comte insisted that positivism was not simply an intellectual doctrine. It was not one of many “vain academic recreations.”71 It had a practical social mission to fulfill – a mission that would revitalize human morality. In this way, positivism linked “speculative life to active life and even to affective life far more completely than any other doctrine.”72 By only caring about the scientific side of positivism, Barbot de Chement risked becoming a reactionary opposed to the work of social regeneration that marked the nineteenth century. Indeed, Barbot later criticized Comte’s plan of giving a “monthly pension to every lazy worker” as indicative of his mentor’s incapacity to understand “human passions.”73 Yet Comte maintained that Barbot de Chement was the one who misunderstood the emotions. To rectify this problem and counter those who thought he was strange, Comte recommended that the young man marry. Repeating a conviction that he had often expressed as a young man, Comte insisted that happiness always depended “principally on the heart and not on the mind,” as Barbot de Chement assumed.74 The heart was “the true supreme motor of human existence.”75 Barbot de Chement needed to become revitalized by a passion that would bring an “active unity” to his existence, which 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Barbot de Chement to Comte, August 23, 1844, CG, 2:422. Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 1, 1844, CG, 2:283. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:76–7. Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:39. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 29, 1846, CG, 4:83–4. Comte to Barbot to Chement, February 27, 1847, CG, 4:103. Barbot de Chement to Laffitte, May 10, 1876, MAC. Comte to Barbot de Chement, June 17, 1846, CG, 4:18. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:77.

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had hitherto been too intellectual.76 As with Thal`es Bernard, Comte recommended that he find something to do that could in some way benefit others. If he married and started working to improve the human condition, he would be happier and appear less eccentric. Barbot de Chement finally confessed that he was living with a young proletarian woman, a servant, whom he refused to marry. This news shocked Comte, who urged him to recognize his moral obligations to her and to marry her despite his “prejudices of caste” and “fortune.” Eight years before, Comte had advised another aristocratic friend, Jacques-Philippe M´erignon de Montg´ery, to marry his mistress, who had had a child with him. According to Comte, Montg´ery could not overcome his “stupid aristocratic pride,” and after his death, his mistress and illegitimate daughter had suffered the most “frightful consequences” of his prejudices. He did not want Barbot de Chement’s mistress to have the same fate. Comte’s experience with de Vaux seemed to reawaken the empathy for women that he had had as a young man. Though he denied that he had ever changed his position on the condition of women, a subject he regarded as of “capital” importance, he had recently not seemed as interested in their plight as he had been when he had read Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman many years before. His struggles with Massin and the general reaction against Saint-Simonianism had certainly contributed to dampening his ardor in this regard. But now, perhaps inspired by his respect for Austin and de Vaux and aware of a growing interest in the women’s movement, he seemed more concerned with underscoring “men’s real duties toward women.”77 As previously mentioned, his disappointment with the men in his entourage may have also drawn him toward women. On the first anniversary of de Vaux’ death in April 1847, he delivered, often in tears, a three-hour lecture on women and “feminine positivism” in his course to the workers.78 He thus warned Barbot de Chement that no man should be allowed “to play with the moral and social future of any woman.” He added, “You would not be the first distinguished man to marry into a lower class and to have cause to congratulate himself.”79 Perhaps Comte was remembering how he felt when as a young man, he had married Massin, who had been poor. Barbot de Chement did not accept Comte’s criticism and attacked him in turn. He told Comte that he was unrealistic in counting on financial help from society, which in truth did not feel obligated to 76 77 78 79

Comte to Barbot to Chement, February 27, 1847, CG, 4:104. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:75–6. On Montg´ery, see Pickering, Comte, 1:486–7. Comte to Lewes, April 7, 1847, CG, 4:111. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 8, 1846, CG, 4:76.

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him for having systematized the positive ideas that already existed. Moreover, with great insight, he wrote, You accuse me of fatalism but I am persuaded that you will be and you desire to be a martyr to your ideas . . . and that you want to sacrifice in the interest of the triumph of your cause the ease of your domestic life, which is the only kind of sacrifice possible today for people who are militant like you. You want to push goodness to martyrdom: this is what your precursors have done, and you want to do as much; it is almost a necessary conclusion to your system for posterity to say that you preached even by example.

Besides pointing out Comte’s need to be a hero of some sort, Barbot de Chement criticized his hypocrisy. “You give me advice that is different from the paths that you follow: you increase your solitude and [yet] you speak to me about the need to develop my sociability.”80 Never one to take criticism, Comte angrily complained that Barbot de Chement had belittled his achievement. Comte boasted that he “alone [had] created the positive state of a whole order of speculations that are the most difficult and important of all: those concerning social phenomena, whose reduction to natural laws was indispensable to permit a real systematization of the other scientific conceptions.” This service to humanity called for public gratitude and subsidies, not insults. Moreover, he was indignant that Barbot de Chement had offered to help him by giving him a place to stay in his house. This invitation reminded him of the “strange generosity of the great personages of the old regime toward the unhappy Rousseau.” In the more egalitarian age in which they now found themselves, Barbot de Chement’s offer of patronage was degrading; Comte felt it would put him in a position of “fatal powerlessness.”81 Displaying courage and resolution, contrary to what Comte believed he was capable of showing, Barbot de Chement replied that Comte’s axiom seemed to be “Those who are not for me in everything and for everything are against me.” Yet of all philosophies, positivism should be the one that least feared controversy. Undaunted by his mentor’s wrath, Barbot de Chement argued that positivism could not solve all needs, especially those relating to religion. Moreover, it seemed dangerously revolutionary because of Comte’s “appeal to the most anti-social passions” of the masses to get them to act against the egotistical upper classes.82 Positivism was a fine scientific doctrine, 80 81 82

Barbot de Chement to Comte, November 29, 1846, excerpt in CG, 4:236. Comte to Barbot de Chement, November 29, 1846, CG, 4:81–2. Barbot de Chement to Comte, December 21, 1846, CG, 4:238. The entire letter can be found at the MAC.

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not a spiritual or political one. Until it had priests and rituals, it could not answer people’s deep fear of social degeneration.83 Besides rejecting Barbot de Chement’s religious arguments, Comte vehemently denied ever displaying demagoguery, although he did admit he believed in the Jacobins’ goal of incorporating the lower classes into society. It was evident that Barbot de Chement was alienated from both the people and women, the “two social elements . . . [that] live above all by the heart.” He would never appreciate the “new phase of positivism” that would target them.84 This young man disappointed him in much the same way Gustave d’Eichthal had many years before. Comte now regarded him as a “true adversary” and threatened to cut off all ties with him.85 Shocked, Barbot de Chement professed his “sincere attachment” to his “spiritual leader” and begged him to reconsider. He wrote, “It is to you and not to me that it will be necessary to attribute this rupture if it takes place.”86 After all, Barbot de Chement believed he was only trying to be kind in offering Comte a place to stay. It was not fair of Comte to call him an egoist full of pride. Nor was it just for Comte to regard him as a criminal because he had a mistress. Most of all, Barbot de Chement was exasperated with the disdain Comte showed for him because of his embrace of Catholicism. And yet he resisted a break in their relationship because he felt Comte knew him better than anyone else did and he truly loved Comte. “You told me again to love someone. But I love you. I sincerely love several men.”87 Worried that he was a reactionary enthralled with Catholicism, Comte did not respond to Barbot de Chement’s letters for almost a year and would not see him. “I rarely accept discussions and never from those who do not openly acknowledge my fundamental principles.”88 Comte finally saw him in February, 1848, but the meeting could not have gone well. Not until two years later in late 1850 and early 1851 did they exchange a few letters and meet again.89 Comte could not brook the young man’s “grave heresies on the subject of women” and his insistence on marrying someone wealthy.90 Moreover, Comte was furious that Barbot de Chement asked to see one of his unpublished works as a recompense for having helped 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

Barbot de Chement to Comte, April 20, 1847, MAC. Comte to Tholouze, December 18, 1847, CG, 4:130. Comte to Barbot de Chement, December 26, 1846, CG, 4:87. Barbot Chement to Comte, February 23, 1847, MAC. Barbot Chement to Comte, April 20, 1847, MAC. Comte to Barbot de Chement, February 21, 1848, CG, 4:135. Barbot de Chement also corresponded from time to time with Littr´e. See Massin to Comte, May 15, 1850, MAC. Comte to Pierre Laffitte, September 11, 1850, CG, 5:192; Barbot de Chement to Comte, August 19, 1850, MAC.

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him financially. Comte denounced his behavior as typical of rich people.91 At one point, he even suspected Barbot de Chement of using positivism to wend his way into “British high society.” Barbot did indeed write to Mill to find out which English people adhered to positivism.92 After a five-year hiatus, Barbot de Chement wrote Comte a final letter in 1856, which remained unanswered.93 Their relationship had basically ended in 1847.94 But Barbot de Chement’s criticisms that positivism did not satisfy people’s emotional needs as well as Catholicism did not fall completely on deaf ears.95 Although Comte dismissed his remarks, he tried to answer his criticisms in the Syst`eme, which introduced the Religion of Humanity. Thus, within a period of one to two years, Comte lost de Vaux and Bonnin; broke with Maximilien Marie, Lenoir, Mill, and Barbot de Chement; and found his close relationship with Blainville rapidly declining. The Sunday night dinners at Blainville’s, which occurred once a month and which Lenoir (and Maupied) also attended, must have been a strain if indeed Comte still went at all. It is no wonder that he frequently referred to his increasing isolation and solitude. He was becoming more and more of a recluse fixated on the rectitude of his philosophy. Yet some people managed to break through the barriers he constructed around him and became Comte’s faithful disciples. One was Pierre Laffitte. A Gascon, born in 1823 in B´eguey (a town near Bordeaux), he came from a family of successful farmers and artisans. In 1839, he met Comte, who failed him on his examination to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. Laffitte then attended the University of Paris. He was for a time fascinated by the socialist doctrines of Pierre Leroux, but he eventually found his work unsatisfying.96 In 1841, he grew interested in positivism, especially because he liked mathematics, and it spoke to his problems with skepticism, which had plagued him since his break with Catholicism in 1837. He began to read the Cours in 1842 and met Comte again in 1844, when he attended his astronomy course. He declared himself a disciple in 1845.97 Laffitte 91

92 93 94 95 96 97

Comte to Barbot de Chement, December 9, 1850, CG, 5:221; Barbot de Chement to Comte, February 24, 1851, MAC; Comte to Barbot de Chement, February 25, 1851, CG, 6:23. Comte to Pierre Laffitte, September 11, 1850, CG, 5:192. Mill to Barbot de Chement, August 7, 1854, The Later Letters, ed. Mineka, 14:236. Comte to Barbot de Chement, February 25, 1851, CG, 6:23. See also letter from Barbot de Chement to Comte, June 22, 1856, MAC. Comte wrote on the latter, “No response.” When Blainville died, Massin was surprised that Barbot de Chement chose to correspond with Foville rather than Comte. See Massin to Comte, May 15, 1850, MAC. Barbot de Chement to Comte, April 20, 1848, MAC. Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 198. When Laffitte entered Comte’s apartment for the first time one Sunday in 1844, he saw there Thal`es Bernard, to whom Comte was explaining an aspect of the Divine

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often went to Comte’s apartment, where they discussed many issues dealing with philosophy, mathematics, and science; Comte encouraged him, for example, to study biology to round out his education. Taking Comte’s advice, Laffitte followed courses by Blainville, Louis Auguste Segond, Charles Robin, and Claude Bernard. By 1847, Laffitte was Comte’s most frequent visitor and closest companion. The two men met several times a week in the evening beginning at seven o’clock. He talked privately with Comte on Mondays and then met with him and others on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Sometimes he was the only guest at Comte’s Sunday dinners. Comte found these conversations “precious.”98 Laffitte was a mathematics teacher, and Comte helped him find tutoring jobs.99 He also met Clotilde de Vaux before her demise and sympathized with Comte’s loss. Laffitte particularly treasured the moment when he accompanied Comte on May 1, 1847 to P`ere-Lachaise cemetery to visit de Vaux’s grave; afterwards they dined together at Restaurant Dagnaux, facing Caf´e Procope.100 Comte relied upon him a great deal after her death, the demise of Bonnin, and the breaks with Lenoir and Thal`es Bernard.101 For his part, Laffitte admired Comte’s “profound sincerity,” depth of emotion, and drive to improve himself morally. Comte displayed, moreover, a “grand simplicity”and keen sense of “irony” and “wit.”102 Comedy. See also Emmanuel Lazinier and Sybil de Acevedo, “Quelques disciples et sympathisants c´el`ebres,” Auguste Comte: Qui eˆtes-vous? ed. G´erard de Ficquelmont (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1988), 337–8; Testament (1896 ed.), 4; Frederic Harrison, “Vari´et´es: Pierre Laffitte,” RO, 2d ser., 14 (March 1897): 243; Pierre Laffitte, “R´eponse a` quelques objections,” RO 20 ( January 1888): 34. 98 Whenever Comte could not go to the opera, he offered his ticket to Laffitte. See also Comte to Laffitte, October 4, 1855, CG, 8:123; Comte to Pierre Laffitte, January 4 and February 6, 1845, CG, 2:313, 325; Comte to Laffitte, October 22, December 26, 1846 CG, 4:65, 89; Deroisin, Comte, 90; statement of Laffitte, n.d., MAC; Frederic Harrison, “Vari´et´es: Pierre Laffitte,” RO, 2d ser., 14 (March 1897): 243–4. On Laffitte’s recollections of visiting him in 1844, see Pierre Laffitte, “Mat´eriaux pour s´ervir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Carri`ere polytechnique d’Auguste Comte,” RO 19 (1887): 309. 99 Laffitte to Marcellin Laffitte, May 8, 1848, MAC. Laffitte landed a posisition as a mathematics and physics teacher at the Institution Harant, which prepared students for the Ecole Polytechnique. See Annie Petit, “L’Oeuvre de Pierre Laffitte,” Revue internationale d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques, 2d ser., 8, no. 2 (2004): 47. 100 Laffitte considered this day one of the “most beautiful” of his existence. See Laffitte, ed., “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 187. 101 Pierre Laffitte, “Notes sur la seconde du mercredi 2 juin 1847,” in packet entitled “Notes sur la Confession annuelle d’Auguste Comte,” MAC; Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 197. 102 Referring to Dante, Comte displayed his moral preoccupation when he told Laffite one day, “I purge myself of original sin with him when I read the Purgatory.” Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 187, 189, 190.

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Laffitte became the philosopher’s most supportive disciple, for he was, in Comte’s eyes, both “judicious” and “docile.”103 In other words, he could be easily dominated. For example, in June 1849, Laffitte hesitated to return from Tours to Paris for fear of an outbreak of cholera in the capital. Comte, missing his company, chided him for his “excessive prudence.”104 As with Barbot de Chement, Comte continually lambasted him for lacking energy. In Comte’s mind, energy was the predominant masculine trait, whereas tenderness was the leading characteristic of women. He wrote, “The moral formula of woman is tenderness, purity, and energy; but that of man is . . . energy, tenderness, and purity.”105 Energy was crucial for making active decisions and even for cultivating affections. Men should develop at least some tenderness, but if they were tender but not forceful, they would be inept in “serious battles.”106 Laffitte agreed that he himself lacked “character” and “audacity,” and he tried to increase his energy.107 Despite his disappointment in Laffitte’s moral character, Comte felt closer to him than anyone else, and in September 1849, he expressed his hope that the young man could succeed him as head of the positivist movement.108 After all, he experienced with him a “full conformity . . . of sentiments and thoughts that no one else, since . . . Clotilde” had made him feel to the same extent. (Because Maximilien-Paul-Emile Littr´e, another disciple, was approximately the same age as Comte and was extremely busy with other matters, he considered him more of a “colleague” than a possible successor.109 ) Although “the most eminent among the theoricians” of positivism, Laffitte was not allowed to waver from Comte’s doctrine, come up with new ideas, or publish substantial works on philosophy.110 Forgetting the resentment he felt at Saint-Simon’s effort to dominate him, Comte insisted on controlling everything.111 103 104 105 106

107

108 109 110

111

Comte to Laffitte, October 15, 1845, CG, 3:154. Comte to Laffitte, June 11, 1849, CG, 5:34. Comte to Laffitte, September 12, 1849, CG, 5:71. Comte referred to the scientist Joseph Fourier as an example of such a weak man. Comte to Laffitte, September 18, 1850, CG, 5:193. On energy, see Syst`eme, 4:282; Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 143. Laffitte to Comte, September 15, 1849, CG, 237; Comte to Laffitte, September 18, 1850, CG, 5:193. In 1850, Comte again complained about Laffitte’s character after he insisted on prolonging his stay in the Gironde. See Comte to Laffitte, October 16, 1850, CG, 5:211. Comte to Laffitte, September 3, 1849, CG, 5:71. Comte to Laffitte, October 2 1849, CG, 5:93. Comte to Laffitte, August 18, 1854, CG, 7:245. See also Comte to Laffitte, September 3, 1854, CG, 7:259. Comte was worried, however, that Laffitte did not fully understand his doctrine of the separation of powers. Comte to Laffitte, October 2, 1849, CG, 5:100.

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Another young Frenchman who found inspiration in Comte’s works was Modeste-Etienne Claudel. Born in 1817, Claudel had a working-class background. He now was an employee of the Department of Public Works in the eastern part of France. His real passion was mathematics, which he enjoyed teaching. Apparently, he was very interested in education and in politics. He remembered that in a session of the Chamber of Peers in either 1843 or 1844, someone had alluded to Comte as the person who held the “solution to the great problem of teaching Humanity.”112 Shortly after writing a course on algorithms, Claudel wrote to Comte in 1844 to ask him he could dedicate the book to him. Comte declined the honor, but they met from time to time to discuss personal and academic matters.113 Claudel fancied himself “maybe” Comte’s “best friend.”114 He willingly put up with the persecution he encountered for embracing positivism.115 othe r admire r s During this melancholy period in his life, Comte found much solace in the fact that his work was becoming more widely appreciated. He boasted that in “all our West, the intellectual and social success of positivism is far more profound” than even his friends imagined.116 He was pleased that many diverse intellectuals seemed to embrace his doctrine, affirming his belief that fixed convictions capable of attracting unanimous support represented the first step toward social regeneration.117 Comte could cite many examples of increasing interest in his work since the completion of the Cours in 1842. In England, Mill had already spoken favorably of Comte in his System of Logic of 1843. Now support began to emerge in Holland. An aristocrat, Baron de Verscheur, applauded Comte’s work.118 Count Menno David van Limburg-Stirum, who was a captain and future minister of war, read Emile Littr´e’s articles on the Cours in Le National, which he then published in Utrecht in 1845. He had been in the military school in Delft with Baron Charles de Capellen, a Dutch cavalry captain, who 112 113 114 115

116 117 118

Modeste-Etienne Claudel to Comte, February 24, 1846, MAC. On his background, see Claudel to Comte, August 20, 1844, MAC. Claudel to Comte, March 20, 1844, MAC. Claudel to Comte, September 26, 1849, MAC. Claudel to Laffitte, August 4, 1859, MAC. In 1859, Claudel complained that he had been persecuted for his positivist beliefs for the past fifteen years. Claudel to Laffitte, August 4, 1859, MAC. Comte to Barbot de Chement, June 17, 1846, CG, 4:19. Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:40. Verscheur to Comte, December 25, 1845.

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now was a positivist sympathizer living in Paris. Capellen acted as a frequent intermediary between the Dutch positivists and Comte.119 In 1846, the Count of Limburg-Stirum, Lieutenant Hendrik Kretzer, and Sub-Lieutenant Jean Van Hasselt, all of whom were connected with the Dutch ministry of war, published their own translation of the first two chapters of the Cours in order to propagate positivist ideas in their country.120 In 1847, Kretzer and Van Hasselt published anonymously a short book, De nieuwe wijsgeerige school [The New Philosophical School], composed of selections from the Cours and Littr´e’s and Mill’s works. Yet like Mill, these Dutchmen and their publisher Kemink were wary of pushing positivism too much for fear of rudely challenging people’s religious beliefs.121 Religious influences were still so strong in their country that “the cruelest reproach one can make to a man is to tell him he has no religion.” Nevertheless, they believed that the “masters of science” had to try to develop positivism to take over the direction of society.122 Van Hasselt and Kretzer continued to write articles in journals, such as the liberal review, De Tijdspiegel, where they presented positivism as superior to religion and conducive to a progressive society. They also persuaded others to write articles discussing the merits of positivism and combating theological-metaphysical ideas. One of their literary friends, who was also close to Limburg-Stirum, was Jan Tideman. He entered into the debates and wrote La Philosophie positive face a` la foi et a` la speculation in 1848. According to Kaat Wils, an expert on positivism in Belgium and Holland, there was a huge outcry against positivism for espousing atheism, materialism, and socialism. Wils argues that because the proponents of positivism in Holland were “servile imitators of Comte,” positivism remained somewhat marginal and had only limited success as an intellectual movement that was critical of traditional religion.123 119 120

121 122 123

Kaat Wils, “Les Sympathisants de Comte et la diffusion du positivisme aux Pays-Bas (1845–1880),” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Petit, 334. Comte de Limburg-Stirum (Captain), Lieutenant H. Kretzer, and Lieutenant Jean Van Hasselt to Comte, April 11, 1846, “Lettre collective,” in RO, 2 ser., 35 (March 1, 1907): 213–214. The names in CG are wrong. See CG, 3:423 The book was called Algemeene Grondslagen der Stellige Wijsbegeerte, that is, General Foundations of Positive Philosophy. Pierre Laffitte, “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Biblioth`eque d’Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d ser., 14 ( January 1897): 129. On Comte’s disciples in Holland, see Kaat Wils, “Gehuld in bet schitterend kleed der nieuwste Parijsche mode. Auguste Comte in Nederland (1845–1880),” in Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 112 (1997): 19–48. I thank Kaat Wils for alerting me to the correct spelling of Van Hasselt. The name is misspelled in the CG. Comte was loath to mention their names because he did not wish to get these employees of the Dutch government into trouble. See Comte to Hutton, May 4, 1854, CG, 7:210. H. Kretzer and Jean Van Hasselt, April 8, 1848, MAC. H. Kretzer to Comte, August 12, 1849, MAC. There was an attack on Comte in the journal Di Nederlander in 1848. Wils, “Les Sympathisants,” 335–8. Comte was upset

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As for France, responses to Comte’s philosophy were still mixed. A group of French doctors from Rennes announced their adhesion to positivism at a medical conference.124 Emile Saisset, a “fashionable psychologist” and student of Victor Cousin, wrote a long, serious article on Comte’s Cours, which appeared in an issue of the leftist journal, the Revue des deux mondes, published on July 15, 1846.125 Saisset commended Comte on his erudition and zeal but attacked positivism for being materialistic, atheistic, and Epicurean. Limiting everything to what could be observed ran counter to the best parts of human nature, especially people’s curiosity, drive to attain dignity and immortality, and desire to understand justice and wisdom. Comte offered individuals only a “life without any goal,” a “life without poetry.”126 Comte did not read the article, but one of his disciples gave him a detailed report, full of quotations.127 Nonplused, Comte boasted that at least “metaphysicians” had finally decided not to stifle his philosophy by continuing their regime of “silence” toward it.128 He was pleased that the press now was talking about him.129 Indeed, both the Univers, which was Catholic, and the Courrier franc¸ais discussed Saisset’s article.130 Religion did seem to play a key role in people’s response to Comte’s doctrine. Various mathematics and science teachers wrote to tell Comte of their support for his philosophy, which fought against “blind prejudices” and led some of them to abandon their religion.131

124 125

126 127 128 129 130 131

when Kretzer died suddenly in 1850. Comte to Limburg-Stirum, November 7, 1850, CG, 7:216. Wils also points out that the exponents of positivism in Holland had a somewhat conservative political agenda besides an anti-religious one. They promoted positivism to combat “metaphysical” notions of equality and popular sovereignty, which they feared would lead to anarchy. Some freethinkers had a hard time with this position. Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:40. Comte to Lewes, July 24, 1846, CG, 4:29; Modeste-Etienne Claudel to Comte, December 25, 1846, MAC. According to one of Comte’s friends (Modeste-Etienne Claudel), Saisset attempted to incorporate positivism into eclecticism, Cousin’s philosophy. Comte did not approve of Saisset’s psychology, and though he refused to read the article, he sent it to Mill, Littr´e, and Lewes to show that the Cours was finally attracting attention. Saisset wrote the article after Emile Littr´e published articles in support of positivism in Le National. See Emile Saisset, M´elanges d’histoire, de morale et de critique (Paris: Charpentier, 1859), 339n1. Saisset’s article on “La Philosophie positive” is reprinted on pages 339–425. Emile Saisset, “La Philosophie positive,” Revue des Deux Mondes 15 ( July 15, 1846): 185, 195, 196, 213–20. Claudel to Comte, December 25, 1846, MAC. Comte to Lewes, July 24, 1846, CG, 4:29. Comte to Mill, May 6, 1846, CG, 4:7. The article in Univers appeared September 21, 1846 and condemned positivism as materialistic. Claudel to Comte, December 25, 1846, MAC. See also Deroisin, Comte, 28. Henri Imbert to Comte, November 17, 1843, MAC. See also Alphonse Leblais to Comte, July 15, 1846, MAC.

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Even a priest who was a conservative professor of theology at the Sorbonne spoke well of Comte. He recommended the Cours for having attempted a “reconstruction” without falling into eighteenth-century negativism. Comte was amused that the cleric seemed to forget that the Cours was on the Index.132 Another priest, who claimed to be the last descendant of Joan of Arc, announced that he too was an adherent of Comte’s system.133 A lawyer and state prosecutor in Bordeaux and later P´erigueux, Henri de Tholouze adopted positivism as a substitute for Catholicism, which he had abandoned after studying philosophy at his Jesuit secondary school. His cousin, one of Comte’s former students at the Ecole Polytechnique, mentioned the Cours to him. After joining the bar in 1839, he started reading it and enjoyed discussing the principles of positivism with Valat, Comte’s former friend, who had been his mathematics teacher. Considering the Cours an “immortal” work of “genius,” Tholouze was grateful to Comte for having devised a replacement for Catholicism – a replacement that emphasized the importance of morality over science and prized transparency. In a time of confusion, positivism seemed to offer grounds for certainty as well as moral righteousness. Unlike Barbot de Chement, Tholouze found that positivism fulfilled his spiritual needs. Tholouze wrote, Where I sense especially . . . the . . . profound influence of positive philosophy is in its sound method. The positive method permits us to approach questions openly, by always establishing facts as the basis of any discussion. We are . . . in the reality of things; we have nothing to hide. We are freed . . . from this official hypocrisy to which all the other doctrines are condemned. We can express all our thoughts because the facts are there to justify them.134

In late 1848, Tholouze came to Paris and confided in Comte, treating him as a spiritual adviser. Comte was grateful, for it added luster to his own self-image as one of the “priests of humanity.”135 He was pleased to hear that Tholouze regarded him as the “greatest philosopher of our century” and recognized the moral thrust of the Cours.136 132 133 134 135

136

Comte to Mill, September 3, 1846, CG, 4:37–8. See also Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:41. Claudel to Comte, August 15, 1847. This priest had a long discussion with Comte about Christ’s divinity. Tholouze to Comte, September 13, 1849, CG, 5:235–6. Comte, Introduction (August 8, 1848) to Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la commission charg´ee d’examiner la nature et le plan du nouveau gouvernment r´evolutionnaire, by Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte, August 9, 1848, CG, 4:286. See also Tholouze to Comte, December 17, 1848, MAC. Tholouze to Comte, November 23, 1846, CG, 4:234–6. Tholouze and Comte corresponded until the latter’s death. From time to time, Tholouze sent him his own work to demonstrate positivism’s influence on his intellectual development.

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Most of all, Comte was proud of Emile Littr´e’s articles on the Cours, which were published in Le National in late 1844. They proved that his work was appreciated by leading intellectuals in France. Littr´e would soon become one of Comte’s most distinguished disciples.137 Littr´e was born in Paris in 1801 of parents who were enthusiastic supporters of the French Revolution. His mother was a daughter of a Montagnard and was a practicing Protestant. His father, who named him after Maximilien Robespierre, was the son of an artisan and worked as a mid-level bureaucrat in the tax office. A freethinker, he would not allow him to be baptized. Littr´e was a brilliant student, interested in many subjects. After studying medicine, he decided at the end of his program not to become a doctor, partly because he lacked the money to set up a practice.138 He then developed his interests in philosophy, history, lexicography, and foreign languages. He knew Greek, Latin, German, English, Italian, Sanskrit, and Arabic. At the same time, he devoted himself to scientific journalism, contributing to the Journal des d´ebats and the Revue des deux mondes. Between 1839 and 1861, he compiled, edited, and translated into French the complete works of Hippocrates – a massive ten-volume project that garnered him much fame. Littr´e’s literary achievements were also remarkable. He translated David Strauss’s Life of Jesus, which argued that the New Testament was essentially a myth. Appearing in 1839 and 1840, the two volumes created much controversy.139 He and Comte met around the time of this work’s publication, thanks to Caroline Massin. One day in late 1839, she visited one of Comte’s oldest friends, Alexandre Meissas, who had attended the Ecole Polytechnique and wrote geography books.140 Littr´e happened to be there, for he was a friend of Meissas as well. After introducing Littr´e to Massin, Meissas urged him to read Comte’s Cours and gave him a copy. When Comte heard that Littr´e was reading his book, he also sent him the six-volume set. Littr´e autographed a copy of his 137 138 139 140

Littr´e’s articles on the Cours appeared in Le National on November 22, 25, 26, and 29 and December 3 and 4, 1844. Jean-Charles Sournia, “Littr´e a` l’Acad´emie de M´edicine,” Bulletin de l’Acad´emie Nationale de M´edecine 165 (1981): 942. Comte had a copy of this book. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Deroisin, Comte, 36. Deroisin is wrong about the date they met. He asserts that they made each other’s acquaintance in 1843. Littr´e insists that it was 1840. But the date must be late 1839 because Littr´e sent Comte the two-volume translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus on December 21, 1839. See the two autographs in the books, Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. See also Littr´e, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, 2d. ed., i. Massin and Meissas had a falling out. Massin was not happy that his blond daughter was accompanying Comte to the theater. See Massin to Comte, November 9, 1842, February 26, 1843, March 23, 1843, MAC.

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translation of Strauss’s Life of Jesus on December 21, 1839 and gave it to Comte in thanks.141 In 1863, Littr´e explained the effect of Comte’s work on him: His book subjugated me. A struggle was established in my mind between my old opinions and the new ones. The latter triumphed, especially because they showed me that my past was only a stage and they produced not a rupture and a contradiction, but an extension and development [of my convictions]. I became from that time a disciple of the positive philosophy, and I remain so.

Having a decided animosity toward religion, as revealed in his decision to promote Strauss’s ideas, and having had difficulties recovering from the loss of a beloved brother in 1838, Littr´e was in a “negative state.”142 He found in Comte’s philosophy a rational, secular world-view that appealed to his own systematic mind – a mind that needed coherence. Positivism provided him with an optimistic vision of a future republic devoted solely to the interests of humanity. He himself was a liberal republican who had been involved in the Revolution of 1830. Positivism encouraged his activism. Besides its stance on progress and its republicanism, positivism’s emphasis on history and the natural sciences, especially biology, accorded well with his own wide-ranging interests. He was particularly seduced by the new science of sociology, which promised to unveil the secrets of social operations. Moreover, its synthesis of these subjects with a dogmatic twist satisfied his anxious, hesitating nature in much the same way that it pleased Mill. Positivism, in short, made his world seem more stable.143 Littr´e wrote, “The work of Auguste Comte, entirely captivated me.”144 His adhesion to positivism was indeed more complete and enthusiastic than that of Mill, who objected to certain parts of 141

142 143

144

See the Life of Jesus in Comte’s library at the Maison d’Auguste Comte. The pages are cut, so Comte may have read it. Curiously, another person interested in Comte, George Eliot, translated Strauss’s book into English. Littr´e, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, 2d ed., i, 662. Jean-Franc¸ois Six, Littr´e devant Dieu (Paris: Seuil, 1962), 22; Alain Rey, Littr´e: L’Humaniste et les mots (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 73, 232, 246; Jean Hamburger, Monsieur Littr´e (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), 69. On the different approaches of Comte and Littr´e to the philosophy of history, see Annie Petit, “Philologie et philosophie de l’histoire,” in Actes du Colloque Littr´e: Paris, 7–9 octobre 1981 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 215–43. Petit argues that as a philologist, Littr´e placed far more emphasis on history than did Comte and worried more about forgetting the past and effacing tradition. In his work, “history invaded sociology and subjugated it.” On the other hand, to the more optimistic Comte, history had a more specific task; it was supposed to be “dynamic sociology,” that is, the “study of societies from the point of view of progress.” Ibid., 227–8. Littr`e, “Etudes sur les progr`es du positivisme” (1876), in A. Comte, Principes de philosophie positive (Paris: J.-B. Bailli`ere, 1891), 211, cited by Ernest Coumet, “La Philosophie positive d’E. Littr´e,” in Actes du Colloque Littr´e, Paris, 7–9 octobre 1981, ed. Jacques Roger (Paris: Albin Michel, 1983), 180.

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positivism. Comte believed that Littr´e better understood the need for an intellectual system to satisfy both the heart and mind.145 A fellow Academician, Maxime du Camp, wrote of Littr´e: His ugliness was extraordinary but his gaze had a depth and form of penetration that was surprising. He was a saint, the Saint Vincent de Paul of atheism. Few others have led a life as beautiful or as productive as his. A critical and fervent mind, devoured by the need to believe, he [preferred to] trust in Auguste Comte and his fine visions, rather than believe in nothing.146

Comte and Littr´e soon became friends. Comte even urged Massin to vacation with the Littr´e family. Massin grew particularly fond of Littr´e’s mother and was devastated by her death in December 1842. Madame Littr´e had been a very domineering mother, and her closeness to Massin may have contributed to Littr´e’s sense of duty to protect her.147 In 1847, when Comte broke with Lenoir, he had Littr´e replace him as the go-between with Massin. Every three months, Littr´e delivered to Massin the money Comte earmarked for her support.148 Seeking distraction from his own sorrow at his mother’s death and anxious about Comte after the loss of his position at the Ecole Polytechnique, Littr´e decided to make positivism better known, especially in republican circles. He figured that Comte needed more supporters who could help him financially. Moreover, if Comte’s reputation soared, perhaps the school would rehire him or at least not fire him from his secondary position as r´ep´etiteur. Littr´e, frustrated at being recognized simply as a fine translator, may have also had an ulterior motive for promoting positivism: to make a bigger name for himself.149 This campaign began in November and December 1844, when Littr´e published a series of six articles on the Cours under the title “De la Philosophie positive” for Le National. He had started writing on science, medicine, politics, and history for this left-wing journal in 1835, when its editor was the famous Armand Carrel, who was killed in a duel a year later.150 Littr´e and Carrel were good friends, as were Carrel and Comte. Carrel had even told Comte that he admired 145 146 147 148 149 150

Comte to Limbourg-Stirum, Kretzer, and Van Hasselt, April 30, 1846, CG, 3:380. Description of Littr´e, Maxime du Camp, ca. 1881, Fonds Maxime du Camp, ms. 3747, Archives of the Biblioth`eque de l’Institut de France. Deroisin, Comte, 61. Caroline Massin to Comte, September 3, 1840, March 29, 1843, October 8, 1847, MAC. Dr. [ Jean-Franc¸ois-Eug`ene] Robinet, M. Littr´e et le Positivisme (Paris, 1871), 11. Littr´e also wrote for the Revue des deux mondes.

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Littr´e’s “beautiful soul.”151 Littr´e’s long collaboration with the journal and his solid reputation enabled him to persuade the publishers, who at first objected to his anti-religious stance, to devote a sizable part of the paper to this work of propaganda. Delighted to have helped Littr´e, Marrast, the editor of the Le National, sent the articles to Comte, hoping the philosopher would break his rules of “hygiene” to read them. Marrast explained, I have fulfilled one of my dearest wishes in publishing this review. It seemed to me to be shameful for the French press that a book of such great scope like yours would appear without attracting any public attention. Thus despite all the obstacles, it is a duty that we have filled, and I am proud that it has been with the help of such an eminent mind as that of Littr´e.

Proclaiming his deep “devotion” to Comte, he hoped the “publicity” would compensate him for all the “injustices” that had been done to him.152 At this point, Le National had a press run of about four thousand copies, many of which reached the provinces.153 Littr´e’s articles simplifying and summarizing the main ideas of positivism were very well regarded and had an enormous impact on Comte’s reputation. All the issues were sold out immediately, much to Littr´e’s and Comte’s surprise. Littr´e then published them in a single volume, De la Philosophie positive: Analyse raisonn´ee du Cours de philosophie positive, in early 1845 to give this doctrine a better chance to achieve the widest possible appeal among both intellectuals and the people.154 Comte later made members of the Positivist Society agree to adhere to the five conclusions Littr´e laid out in this work.155 The “essential points” of the Cours, according to Littr´e, were the determination of the law that regulates societies, going from the theological stage to the metaphysical stage to arrive at the positive stage; the nature of questions, which must cease to be absolute to become relative; the method, which goes from the world toward man and not from man toward the world; the hierarchical coordination of the sciences, which indicates their relations and reciprocal reactions; 151 152 153 154

155

Comte, “Pr´eface,” Syst`eme, 1:14n1. See also J.- B. Foucart to Laffitte, November 29, 1857, MAC. Marrast to Comte, December 5, 1844, Pierre Laffitte, ed., “Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Armand Marrast,” RO 10 (March 1883): 191. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 99. Comte to Limburg-Stirum et al., April 30, 1846, 380. They were republished in Littr´e’s Conservation, r´evolution et positivisme (1852) and Fragments de philosophie positive et de sociologie contemporaine (1876). Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4:269.

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[and] the incorporation of the sciences into philosophy, and because of that, finally, the homogeneity of all our conceptions.156

Comte was pleased to have the adhesion of a famous member of the Institut, whom he called “the most eminent . . . of the erudite men living today.”157 He explained to John Stuart Mill that Littr´e’s articles, which could not be more “satisfying,” were a “sort of philosophic event”; they finally broke the “silence maintained toward me by the French periodic press with such strange unanimity” for the past twenty-four years.158 In an allusion to Mill’s promotion of positivism in the System of Logic, Comte thanked him for having served as a model for Littr´e to follow. Having once met this “solitary scholar” in 1836, Mill found Littr´e’s review articles “excellent” and likewise welcomed his assistance.159 He was, however, somewhat surprised by the degree to which Littr´e supported positivism. Grote also read with approbation Littr´e’s articles in Le National. He was pleased to see how well he abridged the Cours. Referring to the moral, social, and political parts that he disliked, he commended Littr´e above all for having indicated “with sufficient frankness the unpopular side of positivism, without, nevertheless, highlighting it too much.”160 According to his biographer, Littr´e served for approximately forty years as the “premier evangelist of positivism.”161 His superb journalistic abilities, his close connections with powerful people on the left and in academic circles, and the great respect given to him for his brilliance and general erudition constituted a great boon to Comte’s philosophy. Comte astutely noted that because of Littr´e’s support, he was entering into a “new phase” of his life.162 Although somewhat well-known in England, thanks largely to the efforts of Mill, positivism had been a fairly suspect doctrine in France, where Comte’s reputation as an atheistic eccentric and his obscurity as a scholar hindered its acceptability. Littr´e helped to make it one of the most important movements in nineteenth-century France. Comte was relieved that “fame [was] succeeding obscurity,” though he figured that his enemies would redouble their efforts to undermine him, especially by threatening his economic well-being. Nevertheless, he felt fortified 156 157 158

159 160 161

E. Littr´e, De la Philosophie positive (Paris, 1845), 102. Comte to Mill, October 21, 1844, CG, 2:292. Comte to Mill, October 21 and December 25, 1844, CG, 2:292, 303. Comte also expressed his appreciation in the first volume of the Syst`eme. See “Pr´eface,” Syst`eme, 1:14–15. Mill to Comte, November 25, December 31, 1844, CG, 2:427, 430. Grote to Comte, January 29, 1845, CG, 2:432. Working on a history of Greece, Grote was already an admirer of Littr´e’s work on Hippocrates. Six, Littr´e, 26. 162 Comte to Barbot de Chement, January 5, 1845, CG, 3:316.

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by the way in which Mill and Littr´e were forming the intellectual elite – the “positive school” – that he had always sought to create.163 He was certain that other thinkers would soon join in this “serious propagation of positivism.”164 e nglish e nthusiasts: george he nry lewe s Advocates of positivism seemed to proliferate in England in particular, despite the fact that Comte felt ambivalent toward the English. After his experience with Mill, who refused to discuss his atheism openly, Comte concluded that there was not sufficient liberty of discussion in England. He also disliked England for a number of other reasons: its embrace of Protestantism and individualism, the strong position of its aristocracy, and its tendencies toward imperialism. Resentful of England’s industrial success, which he was certain would soon end, he, moreover, denounced its industrialists for their exploitative treatment of their workers, whom they tried to contain by “industrial triumphs, material preoccupations, and theological degradation.”165 The success of Thomas Malthus’s theories, which denigrated the working class, further appalled him. Despite these reservations, Comte was delighted, if puzzled, by the support of many Englishmen. One young enthusiast was Alexander William Williamson (1824– 1904), an Englishman of Scottish ancestry, who was later to become renowned for devising a method to prepare ethers.166 As a student, Williamson had pursued courses in mathematics, biology, and physics, and had also worked at the University of Giessen with Justus Liebig, the founder of modern chemistry.167 Mill, who was a friend of his father’s, advised him to further his “positive studies” with Comte.168 To supplement his earnings, Comte had started tutoring in June 1846, 163 164 165

166 167 168

Comte to Mill, December 25, 1844, CG, 2:304. Comte to Mill, May 6, 1846, CG, 4:4. Comte to Williamson, November 19, 1849, CG, 5:111, 113. See also J. Harris and W. H. Brock, “From Giessen to Gower Street: Towards a Biography of Alexander William Williamson (1824–1904),” Annals of Science 31 (1974): 109. Harris and Brock, “From Giessen to Gower Street,” 94. Comte owned one of Liebig’s books: Lettres sur la chimie et sur ses applications (1845). See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Auxillaire, I, MAC. In June 1845, Mill had asked Comte to accept as a boarder a young Englishman, who wished to live in Paris in the winter and have someone direct his scientific studies. This young man was no doubt Alexander Williamson. Comte refused, not wanting to accommodate a stranger in his apartment. Mill to Comte, June 24, 1845, CG, 3:395; Comte to Mill, June 27, 1845, CG, 3:44; Mill to Comte, June 24, 1845, CG, 3:395. See also Harris and Brock, “From Giessen to Gower Street,” 107. At one point, Williamson introduced Comte to Moriz Carri`ere, a student of Hegel and professor of philosophy at Giessen. See statement of Laffitte, n.d., MAC.

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several months after de Vaux’s death.169 Although Comte refused to take him as a boarder, he was happy to tutor him, especially after Mill pointedly told him that he, like his father, found religion “profoundly” repugnant.170 Williamson studied mathematics with Comte for three hours each week at a cost of ten francs an hour. When his father wondered about the expense and value, the young man replied, If my experience of Comte’s superior powers were insufficient to convince you that his lessons were worth their price, John Mill’s saying that he “would prefer him to any man in Europe to finish a scientific education” ought to carry the point, and induce you to consent to my continuing as I have begun.171

After a while, Williamson spent many evenings at Comte’s house among his disciples and read his works. He became eager to help propagate his ideas.172 He took his side against Mill, whom he saw on one trip to London in early 1848. Williamson’s biting references to Mill’s “great physical debility” and “great nervous irritability” were surely meant to please the disillusioned Comte, who hoped the young man would replace Mill as head of the positivist movement in England.173 Williamson became friends with Laffitte as well. The two young men often met Comte alone on Tuesday evenings.174 Once when Laffitte was away and delinquent about writing, Williamson wrote to him, “Your prolonged absence and silence since your first letter 169

170 171

172 173 174

Every year, Comte had one or two students, whom he tutored for several months. These lessons brought in approximately 180 francs a month. From June 1846 to September 1850, he tutored the following: Mr. de Saint-Charles, Mr. d’Arusmont (husband of Fanny Wright, the feminist) and his daughter, Mr. Emile Pascal, M. de Girardin, Mr. ChahataIssa, Mr. Campane, and Madame Baudoin. See “El`eves priv`es d’Auguste Comte,” document at MAC and Mademoiselle F. d’Arusmont (daughter of Fanny Wright) to Comte, August 5, 1846. Comte tutored Girardin in the mid-1840s. It is unclear if this was Emile de Girardin or one of his relations. See notebook “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, mai 1838–septembre 1857,” MAC. Mill to Comte, June 24, 1845, CG, 3:395. Alexander Williamson to Alexander Williamson (father), n.d., in E. Divers, Proc. Roy. Soc., 1907, xxviii–ix, quoted in Harris and Brock, “From Giessen to Gower Street,” 107. See also Williamson to Comte, November 5, 1849, MAC. Impressed, like Leibig, with Williamson’s abilities, Comte soon advised him to attend Blainville’s lectures on biology and arranged for the scientist to give him access to his laboratory devoted to anatomy. Comte to Blainville, November 23, 1846, CG, 4:79. See also comment of Laffitte, notes, December 2, 1846, CG, 4:237 and Harris and Brock, “From Giessen to Gower Street,” 107. See letter from Williamson to Comte, March 1, 1847, MAC. Williamson to Laffitte, March 19, 1848, MAC. Comte to Laffitte, May 7, 1849, CG, 5:20.

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begin to hurt our dear master a great deal. . . . He is a tender soul who is easily hurt, especially by the object of his dearest affections.” Williamson urged Laffitte to write to “P`ere Comte” or return soon to “kiss love’s gentle tears away.”175 Given the closeness of their relationship, Comte was sad when Williamson left in September 1849 to go to University College London, where he became a professor of chemistry.176 Tensions in their relationship soon emerged. Williamson’s inaugural lecture, entitled “Development of Difference the Basis of Unity,” not only represented a profession of his Protestant faith, which he was forced to make, but celebrated England’s role in the coming regeneration of European society. Williamson believed the industrial might of London made it the temporal center of Humanity.177 France, in his opinion, was too contemptuous of practical activities, and its pretensions to international prominence were unacceptable.178 These ideas were heretical to Comte, who argued that Paris would never accept London’s leadership in regenerating society and that English religious and secular elites were engaged in “industrial conquests” to distract the common people from demanding necessary social reforms.179 Williamson wrote Laffitte to tell him how profoundly offended he was. After all, he had recently written to Comte the following words: “I respect and love you.”180 Now he felt he could not express his dissenting opinions without Comte making “unfavorable hypotheses” about his “character.” He objected to Comte’s accusation that he was “corrupted” by the English milieu, which implied that he was weak and dishonest.181 Moreover, he was angry that his inability to give money to support Comte was interpreted as a sign of dissent.182 Yet it is clear that Comte could not tolerate divergences and insisted on total control. His correspondence with Williamson soon ended, as did that between Laffitte 175 176

177 178

179

180 181 182

Williamson to Laffitte, October 8, 1848. Comte to Laffitte, September 4, 1849, CG, 5:70; Wright, Religion of Humanity, 70. On Comte’s influence on Williamson, see Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “Atomism and Positivism: A Legend about French Chemistry,” Annals of Science 56 (1999): 88. Williamson to Comte, October 26, 1849, MAC. Comte’s reply is lost. Williamson to Comte, n.d. (probably December 19, 1849), MAC. Williamson also insisted that England was correct to hold onto Gibraltar, a view that Comte rejected. Williamson to Comte, November 5, 1849, MAC. Comte to Williamson, November 19, 1849, CG, 5:116. See also Comte to Williamson, November 19, 1849, CG, 5:109; Williamson to Comte, October 31, 1849, MAC. Williamson felt that the views he expressed in his inaugural lecture were the opposite of those of Mill, who erred in preferring logic to philosophy. Williamson to Comte, November 5, 12, 1849, MAC. Williamson to Comte, November 5, 1849, MAC. Williamson to Laffitte, March 23, 1850, MAC. Williamson to Comte, July 15, 1850, MAC.

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and the young man.183 Nevertheless, in 1855 Comte still considered him one of his main disciples and a complete positivist.184 Another English admirer was George Henry Lewes, the wellknown journalist and future consort of George Eliot. Born in London in 1817, he briefly studied medicine and developed a deep interest in the sciences before deciding to become a writer. He was extraordinarily open to new ideas and read widely in literature and philosophy.185 While breaking into journalism, he became close friends with the famous man of letters Leigh Hunt, who shared his liberal, atheistic views. Hunt introduced him to Mill. In 1842, Lewes read Mill’s System of Logic, which he declared to be the “last and highest expression of English philosophy” and indeed “one of the most remarkable books of the epoch.”186 Thanks to Mill’s influence, Lewes became very interested in positivism in the early 1840s, and the two men spent long hours discussing the Cours. Lewes particularly liked the last volume, which introduced the idea of a Positivist Church and spoke in high-minded tones of humanity and morality without referring to God.187 By 1846, Lewes had read that last volume four times. He explained, “The Cours de Philosophie Positive is indeed a work which must form an epoch in every individual existence, & will form one in the history of thought.”188 Lewes, a great admirer of the pantheistic humanism of Spinoza, yearned for a universal philosophy. Positivism seemed to satisfy him because it was not only secular and scientific but comprehensive and abstract. Appealing to his attachment to Burkean traditionalism as well as to the new emerging socialist trends, the Cours’ emphasis on order and progress also sharpened Lewes’ political analysis. He now felt more confident in criticizing conservatives and leftists for not sufficiently comprehending that intellectual anarchy was the cause of most social ills. Comte had shown Lewes the importance of effecting unanimity on important issues, even to the point of suppressing minority opinions.189 Curiously, this form of authoritarianism, which was contrary 183

184 185 186 187 188 189

On July 7, 1850, Williamson wrote to Laffitte in sorrowful tones because the latter had not responded to his letter. Williamson’s last known letter to Comte is dated July 15, 1850. Although Williamson lost contact with Comte and Laffitte, he visited Comte in September 1850, gave to the Positivist subsidy in 1853, and welcomed certain positivists, such as Constant-Rebecque from Holland, when they visited England. His student H. L. Sulman became a positivist. See Harris and Brock, “From Giessen to Gower Street,” 109n50; Williamson to Laffitte, September 3, 1850 and October 7, 1853. Comte tried to get Richard Congreve, a leading positivist, to meet him. Comte to Congreve, February 4, 1855, CG, 8:25. Wright, The Religion of Humanity, 50; Tjoa, Lewes, 9. Lewes to Karl August Varnhaen von Ense, July 17, 1843, in Baker, ed., Letters, 1:89. Tjoa, Lewes, 105. Lewes to Comte, July 10, 1846, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:130. Tjoa, Lewes, 34–8, 105, 133; Ashton, Lewes, 49; Bain, John Stuart Mill, 76n.

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to the English concern with individualism, had attracted Mill years before. Various scholars of Lewes have sought to pinpoint the appeal of positivism to this gifted autodidact. T. R. Wright explained, “Positivism imparted clarity, structure and a sense of certainty to his criticism while providing him with what amounted to a religious faith.”190 According to Hock Guan Tjoa, Lewes celebrated the new positivist “‘dogma’” because it “replaced intellectual anarchy with a unified and coherent view of the world.” Comte’s new morality represented a “new vision of a meaningful cosmos.” Indeed, Comte proved popular among many educated Victorians like Lewes because positivism combined “empirical probity,” based on the scientific method, and “philosophic breadth”; it offered not only insightful criticisms but constructive “conceptual and social wholes,” such as “humanity.”191 David Williams maintained that to the end Lewes adhered to Comte’s position that “social phenomena should be subjected to scientific observation” and that “social science would study the conditions, facts, and inter-relations of society and subject these to the laws of order and the laws of progress.”192 Excited about positivism, Lewes wanted to talk with Comte himself. Mill asked his friend Armand Marrast to arrange the meeting in May 1842.193 Comte found Lewes “a loyal and interesting young man,” though too interested in psychology.194 (During this same trip, Lewes was introduced to Cousin, whom Comte associated with psychology.) Mill duly apologized for his young friend’s poor scientific background and reminded Comte of how much Lewes admired him.195 Upon his return to England, Lewes wrote articles on Hegel as well as French philosophy.196 In “The Modern Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy of France,” published in July 1843 in the British and Foreign Review, Lewes commended Comte for his outstanding “philosophic power,” which was evident in the way in which he connected the sciences and showed how they must be the basis of the study of society.197 In a letter to a friend, Lewes explained, “He is to the 190 192 193

194 195 196 197

Wright, Religion of Humanity, 50. 191 Tjoa, Lewes, 113, 115. David Williams, Mr. George Eliot: A Biography of George Henry Lewes (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983), 48. Ashton, Lewes, 45; Marrast to Comte, May 22, 1842, in Pierre Laffitte, ed., “Relations d’Auguste Comte avec Armand Marrast,” RO 10 (March 1883): 189; Comte to Mill, May 29, 1842, CG, 2:49. Comte to Mill, May 29, 1842, CG, 2:49. Mill to Comte, June 9, 1842, CG, 2:357. Ashton, Lewes, 331–2; Tjoa, Lewes, 1–13. George Henry Lewes, “The Modern Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy of France,” British and Foreign Review 15 (1843): 405.

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positive sciences what Hegel was to the metaphysical.”198 In another article, he hailed Comte as the “Newton” of history because of his discovery of the “fundamental law of human evolution.” Comte also exposed the “sophism” that “the reins of government should be in the hands of the wisest.”199 Shortly after the publication of this article, Mill wrote to Comte, “Our young friend Lewes . . . is increasingly siding with our common doctrine.” Mill hoped that Lewes’s “frank and vigorous praise” of Comte’s system would draw English readers to Comte’s “great work.”200 Though Comte refused to break his rules of cerebral hygiene to read Lewes’s articles, he asked Mill to thank him on his behalf.201 Comte’s lack of graciousness did not deter Lewes. While in Paris again in the spring of 1846 partly to meet George Sand, Lewes dropped in on Comte the day after de Vaux’s death and renewed their acquaintanceship. He also gave him the first two volumes of his Biographical History of Philosophy, which was a narrative of the history of ideas intended for a nonscholarly audience.202 Lewes began the book by explaining that it was “intended as a contribution to the History of Humanity.” He wished to show how philosophy became a “Positive Science,” marked by induction and a search for knowledge of laws instead of causes or essences. Comte “involuntarily” read the volumes in their entirety and was grateful to Lewes for his introduction, which praised the Cours as the “opus magnum of our age” because of its help in advancing the “empire of Positive Science.”203 Having used the law of three stages in conceptualizing the work, Lewes told Comte that he owed him “so much”204 and even signed his letters “your sincere friend and affectionate Pupil.”205 Lewes’s enthusiasm led him later in 1846 to end the fourth and last volume of his Biographical History of Philosophy with a chapter on positivism, which he regarded as the culmination of the entire tradition of Western thought. Around this time, other British writers, such as John Daniel Morell and Robert 198 199 200 201 202

203 204 205

Lewes to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, March 2, 1842, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:73. George Henry Lewes, “State of Historical Science in France,” British and Foreign Review 16 (1844): 91, 98. Mill to Comte, July 13, 1843, CG, 2:392. Comte to Mill, July 16, 1843, CG, 2:179. Comte to Lewes, April 1, 1846, CG, 3:365. Lewes had originally gone to Comte’s house on April 1 but had missed him, for Comte was busy with the dying de Vaux. They finally met on April 6. See Lewes to Comte, April 1, 1846, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:124; Wright, Religion of Humanity, 52. Lewes, A Biographical History of Philosophy, xv, xxii; Comte to Lewes, July 4, 1846, CG, 4:20. Comte also criticized Lewes for omitting medieval philosophers in his history. Lewes to Comte, April 1, 1846, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:123. This letter is not reproduced in CG. Lewes to Comte, July 10, 1846, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:131.

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Blakey, were beginning to include Comte in their very popular histories of philosophy.206 Although they acknowledged his brilliance and growing influence, they labelled him a materialist and atheist. Lewes was more laudatory. He called Comte “the Bacon of the nineteenth century” and the Cours “one of the mighty landmarks in the history of opinion” because it alone presented a scientific, or positive, doctrine that had the “desired generality of metaphysical doctrines, without possessing their vagueness, instability, and inapplicability.”207 Comte was pleased that Lewes’s book presented the history of philosophy as leading to the “necessary coming of positivism.”208 Republished several times and selling 45,000 copies by 1888, this book played a critical role in popularizing positivism.209 Lewes boasted to Comte, “My book is read at Oxford and Cambridge as well as by artisans and even women.” The first year it was published he estimated that it influenced “so large a mass as fifty thousand readers (for the sale of ten thousand copies implies at least that number of readers).”210 Thanks to Morell, Blakey, and Lewes, most British readers became familiar with Comte.211 At least one Oxford scholar did not like Comte’s doctrine. Benjamin Jowett, a graduate and future master of Balliol College at Oxford, read Comte for the first time in 1850 and later in 1882. Although at first he was drawn to Comte’s picture of the development of the mind and his discussion of the decadence of the Church and old beliefs, he concluded that his “ generalizations” were misleading: there was an “enormous difference between saying that things must be based on facts and showing how they are based on facts.” Not only was Comte metaphysical, but the “enthusiasm which he excited in some minds” was “characteristic of the metaphysical disorder.” 206

207 208

209

210 211

John Daniel Morell covered Comte, whom he calls M. “Compte,” in the six concluding pages (pages 480–86) of the first volume of An Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, published in London in 1846. Robert Blakey devoted fifteen pages to Comte in the fourth volume (pages 307–22) of History of the Philosophy of Mind, published in London in 1848. See Richmond Laurin Hawkins, Positivism in the United States (1853–1861) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), 11–12; Cashdollar, The Transformation, 40–45. Lewes, A Biographical History of Philosophy, 643, 645. Syst`eme, 4:540. Comte again criticized Lewes for various mistakes and omissions. See Comte to Lewes, July 24, 1846, CG, 4:27–8; Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:41. On the number of copies of the Biographical History of Philosophy that were sold, see Dr. Kaines, “Auguste Comte in Great Britain: An Address Delivered before the North London Positivist Society,” The National Reformer n.v. ( September 9, 1888):165. Lewes’s book was also immediately translated into German, popularizing Comte’s ideas there as well. Lewes to Comte, July 10, 1846, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:131. The book was republished in 1857, 1871, 1880, and 1891. See Ashton, Lewes, 50. Cashdollar, The Transformation, 45.

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Sociology itself was a “monstrous fiction” because it could not make predictions, the basic characteristic of a science according to Comte’s own definition. Referring to Lewes, Jowett declared that it was “a poor thing to have studied all philosophies and to end in adopting that of Auguste Comte.”212 Despite such criticisms, Lewes and Mill promulgated Comte’s ideas to such a great extent that many Frenchmen first heard about him when they went to England. Andr´e-Michel Guerry, a criminologist who blended statistics and the study of society, learned about Comte’s ideas in England and asked Littr´e to arrange a meeting. Guerry wanted Comte’s advice about his tables.213 It is not surprising that Frederic Harrison, one of the leading English Comtists, later called his friend Lewes the “chief representative to most reading Englishmen of the Positive Philosophy.”214 Indeed, Comte viewed Lewes as the Englishman whose “adhesion to positivism” was “the most complete and explicit, without excepting our eminent friend [Mill].” According to Comte, Mill feared losing his “natural” position as head of the English “promoters” of positivism to Lewes.215 Yet in truth Mill did not fancy himself to be the leader of English positivists. Nor did he feel threatened by Lewes’s relationship with Comte. Mill was definitely closer to Comte than Lewes was. Comte invited Lewes to dinner in July 1847, and they corresponded a few times in subsequent years without much assiduity. The age difference between Lewes and Comte played a role in creating a certain distance. Moreover, given the fact that Lewes already had other mentors and friends, he never felt the need to pour out his troubles to Comte.216 Indeed, he even felt sufficiently selfconfident to criticize him on various points, especially the style he used in the Cours.217 In his Biographical History, Lewes remarked that “Comte’s works are not calculated to be popular.” The “journey” through the “six stout volumes” of the Cours was “not lightened by any graces of style.” Comte used an excessive number of words “to 212

213 214

215 216 217

Benjamin Jowett to Frederic Harrison, April 30, 1861, Letters of Benjamin Jowett (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1899), 16; Benjamin Jowett, in Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, eds., Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett (London: John Murray, 1897), 2 vols., 1:130, 261; 2:187. For more criticisms of Comte, see Jowett’s handwriten notebook called “Recollections of Comte,” Jowett Papers, IC30, Balliol College, Oxford University. Littr´e to Comte, February 3, 1849, MAC. Frederic Harrison, “Obituary: G. H. Lewes,” The Academy, 14 (December 7, 1878): 544. See also Comte’s comment of 1848, when he says that Lewes was becoming “the principal organ of positivism in England.” Comte to Lewes, October 15, 1848, CG, 4:195. Comte to Lewes, January 28, and April 7, 1847, CG, 4:100, 110. Ashton, Lewes, 129. Lewes to Comte, February 18 (?), 1847, in Baker, ed., Letters of Lewes, 1:143.

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ensure intelligibility at the expense of some ennui.”218 In his article in the British and Foreign Review of 1843, Lewes also dwelled on Comte’s “bad” style, which hampered the diffusion of his ideas.219 Despite these harsh criticisms, Littr´e reassured Comte that Lewes was actively propagating positivism by writing articles on it and giving lectures in English and Scottish cities.220 218 219

220

Lewes, A Biographical History, 654. Lewes stated, “If M. Comte wishes to give his philosophy fair play, he will cut off the superfluous members of his periods, avoid his perpetual references to past and future chapters, and write a great deal less about his intentions.” Lewes, “Modern Metaphysics,” 406. Littr´e to Comte, February 18, 1852, MAC. See also Comte to Lewes, July 5, 1847, CG, 4:123–4; Lewes to Comte, July 6, 1847, CG, 4:246.

Chapter 6

The Revolution of 1848

All these various contacts . . . are developing within me a vivid sense of my present mission as the intellectual and moral director of the great socialist revolution that is rapidly approaching. Comte, September 1849

comte’s re lation to the worke r s: the challe nge of communism A gifted teacher, Comte eagerly responded to artisans’ widespread desire for education. The clockmaker Andr´e-Auguste Francelle, for example, not only audited his astronomy course, but studied mathematics with other teachers.1 As Edward Berenson has noted about this period, “Artisans looked to sympathetic members of the middle class for enlightenment. Far from resenting bourgeois republicans, workers respected their knowledge and, more often than not, they were glad to follow bourgeois leadership.”2 Comte was only too happy to play the part. He was always gratified whenever the workers wrote to him to express their gratitude for his lectures on astronomy. One of the workers, Jean-Fabien Magnin, began a long correspondence with Comte in August 1845. Born in 1810, he worked for a time as a weaver in Lyon, where he became politicized. He then became a carpenter like his father and eventually gained a solid knowledge of other crafts. After settling in Paris, he began to follow courses in the sciences at the Conservatoire des Arts et M´etiers. He also became interested in social reform. However, he kept his distance from Fourierism and communism, especially Etienne Cabet’s Icarian variety. In April 1843, he heard from a fellow worker, Pierre Buisson, about Comte’s lectures on astronomy. Magnin and six workers went the following month and sat right in the front row. After several lectures, he became convinced that positivism offered the best way 1 2

Andr´e-Auguste Francelle to Comte, December 20, 1840, MAC. Edward Berenson, Populist and Left-Wing Politics in France, 1830–1852 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 47. See also Edgar Leon Newman, “The Historian as Apostle: Romanticism, Religion, and the First Socialist History of the World,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (April 1995): 239–61.

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to regenerate society.3 He and his friends attended the lecture series again in 1844 and 1845. The number of workers increased to at least twenty. After each lecture, they met in a nearby “cabaret” to discuss Comte’s ideas. One day Alphonse Darche, a mechanic, suggested that they visit Comte. In his first letter to Comte, written in 1845, Magnin wrote, “Several people here would like to have the honor to be introduced to you to thank you in the name of their comrades who followed your course for your benevolence in wanting to devote so much time and work to the instruction of the public.”4 Comte graciously received Magnin and seven other workers, all of whom were struck by his kindness and concern.5 After a “long and interesting conversation,” Comte gave each of them a copy of his Discours sur l’esprit positif. In early 1846, Magnin and his friends created an association for the propagation of Comte’s teachings. They printed and distributed information about the astronomy course to other workers, explaining that it not only shed light on the scientific method but also showed the way to “a new system of social education,” which satisfied the “needs of Humanity.”6 In addition, Magnin began to teach Comte’s precepts to workers at his home.7 Magnin acted in many ways as a crucial conduit between Comte and the lower class, frequently filling him in on their conditions and aspirations. Comte’s hopes that other scholars would follow his example and devote themselves to popular education were disappointed. Already angry that scientists did not appreciate his philosophical work or his contributions to the Ecole Polytechnique, he took their indifference to public instruction as yet another sign of their “lack of general views and general sentiments.”8 In 1848, he was so disgusted by scientists that he stopped reading scientific reviews and bulletins altogether.9 3

4 5

6

7

8 9

“A la M´emoire de M. Fabien Magnin,” RO, 2d ser., 6 (December 1897): 419; Samuel Kun, “Fabien Magnin (1810–1884),” RO, 3d. ser., 2 (1910): 248; Fabien Magnin, Speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” RO 1, no. 4 (1878): 656; Mirella Larizza, Bandiera verde contro bandiera rossa: Auguste Comte e gli inizi della Soci´et´e positiviste (1848–1852) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 133–4. Fabien Magnin to Comte, August 17, 1845, MAC. The seven other workers were Darche, Buisson, Jean-Pierre Fili, Lef e` vre, Guilbert, GrosJean, and Eug`ene Simon. They and Magnin would continue these yearly visits at the end of his course and also go to his apartment every New Year’s day, beginning on January 1, 1849. Fabien Magnin, Speech, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” 661. On Fili, see Larizza, Bandiera verde, 131n51. Comte to Magnin, January 12, 1846, CG, 3:286–7; Fabien Magnin to Comte, January 11, 1846, MAC. See also Fabien Magnin, Speech, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” 659–60. Magnin continued to give lectures on astronomy to workers after Comte stopped delivering them. Magnin gave his last course on the subject in 1881. Pierre Laffitte, Speech, April 6, 1884, Commemoration of Magnin, in “N´ecrologie,” RO 12 (May 1884): 401–2. Comte to Jacquier Eusice, March 5, 1845, CG, 2:337. Comte to Audiffrent, April 7, 1851, CG, 6:51.

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French scientists were at the forefront in pushing publications as part of the credentialing process. Arago had launched the bulletins of the Academy of Sciences, called the Comptes Rendus, in 1835 because he thought scientists had a duty to publicize their findings.10 Like Arago, who had given popular lectures at the Observatory, Comte believed in spreading scientific learning, as reflected in his course on astronomy to workers. But unlike Arago, he resisted the movement toward professionalization, where scientists were evaluated on their publications and were eager to join academies. Not having published any specialized research and having been rejected at the Academy of Sciences, he did not wish to be reminded of his weakness in this arena. Nor did he wish to reflect on Arago’s success in shaping the field or enhancing the prestige of the Academy. As Maurice Crosland has pointed out, Comte was intent on writing philosophy and in the new increasingly professional world of the sciences, he appeared to be “an amateur.”11 As an amateur, he did not have much clout to hound scientists into following his example and addressing laymen. He sought to bring scientists and the common people closer together, countering the elitism of the former. Instead of reaching out to scientists, who snubbed him, Comte prided himself on cultivating relations with workers, which he believed revealed his broadmindedness and generosity. After being fired from one position at the Ecole Polytechnique, he felt closer to them than ever before. He did not construct sociology to uphold the bourgeois dominance of the government and attack the proletarians as some critics, such as Dominique Lecourt, assert.12 Comte believed that he and the workers were fellow victims of the temporal power, which oppressed and devalued them. They were linked by their vulnerability to dismissal and lack of financial resources (including savings).13 He might earn a bit more than workers, but his “obligatory expenses” were higher.14 Besides a precarious financial situation, they shared a similar secular morality that was less materialistic and 10 11

12 13

14

Crosland, Science under Control, 30, 280; Fox, “Science, the University, and the State,” 82. Maurice Crosland, “Scientific Credentials: Record of Publications in the Assessment of Qualifications for Election to the French Acad´emie des Sciences,” Studies in the Culture of Science in France and Britain since the Enlightenment, ed. Maurice Crosland (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1995), 629. Dominique Lecourt, “On Marxism as a Critique of Sociological Theories,” Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (Paris: UNESCO, 1980), 272. Complaining bitterly about having trouble taking up his old profession of tutor due to his lack of connections and the “rage” of his enemies, who were conspiring against him, Comte claimed that he wished to “obtain, like every other proletarian, a continual exercise of the profession that I have practiced since my first youth.” Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 424. Comte to Mill, July 22, 1842, CG, 2:60.

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self-interested than that of reactionaries, despite the latter’s embrace of Christianity.15 Of all the “French classes,” the workers were “more disposed than any other to adopt views of the whole and to make social sentiments prevail.”16 They were also the only class that did not support the “status quo.”17 Reflecting the way he idealized them as if they represented the Noble Savage, Comte insisted that workers had “excellent moral and mental qualities” that deserved greater recognition.18 The workers’ higher morality legitimized the role they would play in reorganizing society, especially because he believed that it was more crucial to resolve social and moral problems than political ones at this stage in history.19 In the 1840s, the “social question,” in particular, was on everyone’s mind as the abuses connected with the growth of industrial capitalism started to become more apparent. Artisans were threatened by the increasing division of labor, the introduction of new machinery, and laws giving employers greater authority. A sharp economic depression beginning in 1846 and leading to unemployment made workers’ lives even more miserable, as did an agricultural crisis caused by poor harvests. Opponents of the July Monarchy started to become more vocal in their demands for justice. Condemning a political system that allowed only a few hundred thousand wealthy people to vote, they wanted a regime based on universal male suffrage. Opposition to the government was heard everywhere: in the theater, press, popular songs, novels, and philosophical and religious works. Felicit´e de Lamennais and Charles de Montalembert wrote books promoting social and political reforms inspired by a liberal reading of Catholicism. Jules Michelet’s Le Peuple (1846) celebrated the creative energies of the lower classes. Alphonse de Lamartine and Louis Blanc published new celebratory histories of the French Revolution. In his caricatures, Honor´e Daumier made fun of the con men of the laissez-faire world of the July Monarchy. The novelists George Sand, Eug`ene Sue, and Victor Hugo praised the common people and embraced radical doctrines in favor of democracy or socialism.20 15 16 17

18

19 20

Comte to Jacquieur Eusice, March 5, 1845, CG, 2:338. Comte to Lewes, March 20, 1847, CG, 4:107. See Manuscript, “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847 pour l’ouverture de la 17e` me ann´ee du Cours philosophique d’astronomie populaire (1e` re ),” January 17, 1847, 2, MAC. Comte to Lewes, January 28, 1847, CG, 4:102. On Comte and Rousseau, see Paul Arbousse-Bastide, La Doctrine de l’´education universelle dans la philosophie d’Auguste Comte, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), 1:227. Comte to Magnin, October 25, 1846, CG, 4:66. Madeleine Ambri`ere, Pr´ecis de litt´erature franc¸aise du XIXe si`ecle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 143–5; Jeremy Popkin, A History of Modern France (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1994), 105–27; Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times, 5th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 116–20; Christopher H. Johnson, Utopian Communism in France:

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At this time, socialism was a vague term pertaining to diverse plans to create a cooperative, harmonious society by improving the conditions of the poor and eliminating bourgeois individualism and competition.21 Periodicals and books promoting socialist ideas had been popping up since a group of Saint-Simonian workers had launched La Ruche populaire in 1839.22 Former Saint-Simonians were instrumental in popularizing socialism. One of them, Philippe Buchez, inspired another working-class journal, L’Atelier, in 1840. It demanded a variety of social reforms as well as a mixed economy based on the workshop. Buchez’s attempt to fuse Christianity and a revolutionary agenda appealed to many craftsmen. Another former Saint-Simonian, Pierre Leroux established the Revue ind´ependante in 1841, after having achieved a measure of success with his book De l’Humanit´e (1840). Denouncing the egoism of his age, he affirmed the solididarity of individuals through the collective being Humanity, which he considered a god, and he made his philosophy of humanitarianism into a religion. Neil McWilliam points out, Like the Saint-Simonians, Leroux regarded sentiment as an essential element for achieving the religious and intellectual synthesis that would overcome the anarchic skepticism of the modern world. . . . Only by recognizing the value of sentimental modes of perception, embodied in religion, could true synthesis be achieved through the marriage of inductive and deductive thought processes. Similarly, in social relations, Leroux related sentiment to the impulse toward synthesis.23

According to Leroux, woman would play a large role in the regeneration of Humanity. Flora Tristan took up that role. Influenced by Saint-Simonianism, she combined socialism and feminism in her visionary book, the Workers’ Union, which demanded recognition of the workers’ rights to work and organize. After its publication in 1843, she travelled around France for a year trying to create a union that would take care of old and sick workers and educate children and women. In fact, she believed she had a mission from God to

21

22 23

Cabet and the Icarians, 1839–1851 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 16; Christophe Charle, A Social History of France in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Miriam Kochan (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 43. Pierre Laffitte to Comte, August 26, 1848, in CG, 4:252; Collingham, The July Monarchy, 370; Iowerth Prothero, Radical Artisans in England and France, 1830–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 126, 141, 145. Comte later received an 1848 copy of this journal put out by Franc¸ois Duquenne. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Neil McWilliam, Dreams of Happiness: Social Art and the French Left, 1830–1850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 169. See also Ambri`ere, Pr´ecis de litt´erature franc¸aise, 144–5; B´enichou, Le Temps des proph`etes, 330–58; Collingham, July Monarchy, 378.

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contribute to the progress of humanity. Like Buchez and Leroux, she displayed a humanitarianism inspired by religion.24 Hopes for a utopia based on democratic humanitarianism were not limited to those touched by Saint-Simonianism. A follower of Charles Fourier, Victor Considerant, launched La D´emocratie pacifique in 1843. Another Fourierist journal, the Phalange, began to appear in 1845. These periodicals popularized Fourier’s brand of social regeneration, which aimed to establish harmony in communities (phalansteries) by encouraging the satisfaction of the passions. Such associations would eliminate the sufferings caused by the competition inherent in capitalism.25 Whereas the Fourierists advocated the abolition of the family and marriage in their communities, Etienne Cabet and his followers did not. Cabet’s ideal community, which he called Icaria, was like an extended family in that it would exemplify close harmony. To create that kind of harmony, a democratic, egalitarian state would take charge of planning and would abolish private property. The lives of the Icariens would be very regimented. In 1841, shortly after publishing Voyage en Icarie, which explained his ideas, Cabet launched the Populaire. With a press run of 4,500 copies by 1847, it was the most popular journal in working-class circles, especially among artisans.26 Another reformer popular among workers was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who published his famous brochure, Qu’est-ce que la propri´et´e ou Recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement in June 1840. He promoted the ideas that property was theft and that capitalism degraded and alienated workers. To him, the workshop had to be the basic unit of the economy and the government.27 The importance of the workshop was also embraced by the socialist Louis Blanc. In 1839, he published his very influential tract L’Organisation du travail, which traced the moral degradation of the poor to the poverty resulting from a competitive economic system. Blanc envisioned a capitalist-free society based on the “social workshop,” a kind of cooperative association. Regarding the workers as enfeebled by capitalism, he wanted the government to establish a network of these workshops to provide them with credit and coordinate their productive activities.28 Profits from the workshops would favor 24 25

26 27 28

Doris and Paul Beik, ed. and trans., Flora Tristan: Utopian Feminist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), ix, xviii, xxi, 126–27n. B´enichou, Le Temps des proph`etes, 360–70; William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 202; Jonathan Beecher, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 105. Collingham, July Monarchy, 375; Johnson, Utopian Communism, 49, 156. Collingham, July Monarchy, 378. Ibid., 371–2; Sewell, Work and Revolution, 234–5; Robert Tombs, France: 1814–1914 (London: Longman, 1996), 76.

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the common good. Unlike Proudhon, whose ideas tended toward anarchism, Blanc considered the state the key agent of change. All of these social thinkers criticized the individualism, egoism, and materialism of the July Monarchy and demanded that more attention be paid to workers, who were caught in the difficult transition to an industrial economy. Their dreams of social democracy and a future era committed to humanity would inspire the Revolution of 1848.29 Underscoring the “new public fascination with labor” in the 1840s, William Sewell has rightly pointed out that it was not “an accident that Marx’s 1844 manuscripts, which present his most far-reaching statement of the creativity and moral power of labor, were written precisely in these years and in Paris.”30 Though eager to keep his distance from newspapers and other writings that could distract him from his work, Comte was aware of the ferment around him and even at one point expressed his hope that he would never be confused with Eug`ene Sue and Victor Hugo, whose politics were too socialistic for his tastes.31 However, the contemporary writer Emile Saisset and others did see many similarities. Saisset wrote, “I repeat . . . the philosopy of the positive school is the philosophy of socialism. What is glimpsed behind the apocalyptic mysticism of Mr. Pierre Leroux and the false and declamatory religiosity of Mr. Louis Blanc and what is disguised by the systematically obscure jargon of Fourierism and the capricious movement of the antinomies of Mr. Proudhon – all that becomes clear, precise, and significant in the doctrine of the positive school.”32 Like these authors and other socialist reformers, Comte was pained by the conflicts between the “heads” and “arms” of industrial enterprises and looked forward to a moral regeneration of society.33 In early 1842 Comte presciently told Mill that the “proletarian masses” would “soon without a doubt” make their appearance on the political scene, changing the “physiognomy of the present struggles.”34 No longer mere instruments of other groups, they would have a profound effect on politics. Positive philosophers, according to him, should take advantage of the rise of workers, ally with them, and preside over “this extreme revolutionary phase.”35 By stressing the importance of general ideas and generous feelings, instead of relying on politically outmoded institutions, they could preserve what was valuable in revolutionary doctrines and provide “positive education” to the “inferior classes,” who would learn to view positivism as their 29 30 31 33 34 35

Ambri`ere, Pr´ecis de litt´erature franc¸aise, 144–5; Tombs, France, 75. Sewell, Work and Revolution, 222. Comte to Deullin, November 18, 1852, CG, 6:424. 32 Saisset, M´elanges, 411. Comte to Mill, November 5, 1842, CG, 2:107. Comte to John Stuart Mill, January 17, 1842, CG, 2:33. Comte to Mill, November 5, 1842, CG, 2:108.

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only salvation. Positive philosophers could also offer to the upper classes a doctrine that challenged “subversive utopias.”36 Comte figured that in so far as it guaranteed progress and order, positivism would appeal to both opponents in the class struggle, but he was naive in not seeing that because of that very joint appeal, each side might view it with suspicion. In the late 1840s, Comte sought to target the workers, postponing his appeal to the upper class to a later date. In October 1846, Comte informed Magnin that when his course started again in January, he would “characterize positivism as constituting the true philosophy of the people in a far more direct and more pronounced manner” than ever before.37 He was convinced that theology was the philosophy most appropiate to the upper class, while metaphysics was associated with the “middle classes.”38 Preoccupied by the class struggle, Comte knew that his audience expected him to assess publicly “what is today called communism.”39 The term “communism” was vague at this time and generally referred to the extremist variety of socialist ideas that emphasized egalitarianism and collectivism. Gracchus Babeuf had first formulated such a program during the French Revolution, when he sought to overthrow the Directory and install a dictatorship to make all property communal. Influenced by Babeuvism, Cabet called his system of thought “communism,” though he maintained a more moderate, pacific tone. It was chiefly Cabet’s Icarianism that Comte had in mind when he spoke of communism.40 Cabet had approximately 100,000 tightly organized followers, more than any other socialist group. Proudhon and Blanc were also often called communists, as were Blanqui and Barb`es, whose revolutionary activities caused much fear. Moreover, there were various minor thinkers, such as Th´eodore Dezamy, Jean-Jacques Pillot, Alphonse Esquiros, and Abb´e Constant, who embraced communist ideas and often added a terrorist and anti-clerical twist to them. Different clubs, such as the Soci´et´e Communiste R´evolutionnaire, called themselves communist as well. The middle-class press was very alarmed by the dangers presented by the communist movement, which appeared to be growing rapidly in 1846 and attracted artisans and the lower middle class in particular.41 36 37 38 39 40 41

Comte to Mill, January 17, 1842, CG, 2:33–4. Comte to Magnin, October 25, 1846, CG, 4:66. Comte to Barbot de Chement, September 13, 1846, CG, 4:41. Comte to Magnin, October 25, 1846, CG, 4:66. See Comte to Tholouze, September 17, 1849, CG, 5:79. Collingham, July Monarchy, 372–4, 375; Sewell, Work and Revolution, 220. On the vague meaning of the term “communism” in the early nineteenth century, see Albert S. Lindemann, A History of European Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983),

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Not wanting to break his regime of cerebral hygiene, which preserved the “purity, originality, and coherence,” of his own conceptions, Comte asked Magnin for information regarding the communist movement.42 Magnin quickly disabused Comte of his assumption that because he was a worker, he must be a communist. He explained that workers in the building trades, such as carpentry, which was Magnin’s area of expertise, were not well represented in the Icarian movement.43 Yet he obviously had friends who were so inclined, for he agreed to meet Comte several times in late 1846 and 1847 to give him some information and tell him how to obtain more.44 Comte also turned for help to Laffitte, who read Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie and gave him a “very detailed” report on its contents.45 Comte finally concluded that the “utopia” depicted by the communists was easy to refute and not likely in the end to acquire a wide following in a country like France, “where more than half the citizens are more or less property-owners and where the rest are trying to join them.”46 Feeling the need to direct his energies somewhere, especially after the completion of the Cours, the death of de Vaux, and the difficulties involved in writing the Syst`eme, Comte was ready to combat communism and other rival doctrines more vigorously when he began to give his astronomy course for the seventeenth time in January 1847. He asked Magnin to advertise the course in such a way as to connect positivism with the true “popular cause.”47 comte’s cour se of 1847 Despite his enthusiasm, Comte found preparing the lectures harder than he imagined; it took a supreme intellectual effort, one comparable to that of 1826, when he devised his course on positive philosophy. He had troubles expressing his views because as one of his disciples suggested, he shared in the “exaltation” of the period and was moving

42 43 44 45 46

47

xvi; Johnson, Utopian Communism, 46, 68–75, 235; Linda Orr, Headless History: NineteenthCentury French Historiography of the Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 72. Comte to Fabien Magnin, October 25, 1846, CG, 4:66. Johnson, Utopian Communism, 157. Magnin to Comte, October 28, 1846, MAC; Comte to Magnin, October 29, 1846, July 21 and 28, 1847, CG, 4:69, 124. Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 194. Comte to Alix Comte, April 3, 1848, CG, 4:145. Comte often referred to the French people’s “natural taste for property,” which was nourished by the ease of acquiring land. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 194. Comte to Magnin, January 9, 1847, CG, 4:93. See also Magnin to Comte, January 5, 1847, in Pierre Laffitte, ed. “Correspondance d’Auguste Comte avec M. Fabien Magnin,” RO 7 ( July 1884): 3; Comte to Laffitte, July 28, 1849, CG, 5:44.

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“from theory to practice,” just as many socialists were.48 Like them, he sensed the discontent in his country and sought to take full advantage of it. He was certain that the workers were tired of being “simple material auxiliaries of the middle classes against the old superior classes.”49 He hoped to persuade them to adopt his philosophy, which reconciled the “two great instincts of conservation and amelioration” in a new universal morality based on real knowledge, not revelation.50 He wanted to use his philosophy primarily to create “a true social regeneration, which would be first moral, then political.”51 At night he often sat in darkness next to his fire, meditating on how to launch this second phase of positivism.52 Later, he interpreted his deliberations as stemming from his effort in 1847 to work out positivism’s “religious point of view.”53 Reflecting the amount of thought that he gave to this new direction, his opening lectures introducing positivism grew in number and length. Whereas he had given one or two in 1831, he delivered twelve in 1847. Some lectures went on for four hours.54 During one of those opening lectures, he announced his plan for the transitional government that would lead the way to the positive era.55 Even before the Revolution of 1848, his thoughts were becoming more political, although he kept emphasizing the importance of first reforming morality and still insisted on the need to learn the scientific method. Finding interconnections among intellectual, moral, practical, and political issues and treating them in a novel, vigorous way to gain converts was taxing, even for a man like Comte who prided himself on his energetic constitution. Sometimes he even felt obliged to prepare detailed notes on topics he wanted to cover, something that was unusual for him because of his photographic memory.56 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56

Leblais, “Comte,” 371. See “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847,” 2, MAC. Comte to Decaen, January 3, 1848, CG, 4:134. Comte to Jacquieur Eusice, March 5, 1845, CG, 2:338. Pierre Laffitte, “Notes sur la seconde du mercredi 2 juin 1847,” in packet entitled “Notes sur la confession annuelle d’Auguste Comte,” MAC. Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:88. In his course in 1846, which was interrupted from February 22 to May 3 by the demolition of the lecture hall, Comte had already given eight or nine lectures on the philosophical aspects of positivism. See his outline of his course, 1846, MAC; Comte to Magnin, January 12, 1846, CG, 3:286–7. Laffitte says that he gave eleven such lectures in 1846. Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 191. See also Fabien Magnin, Speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” 658–9; Comte to Lewes, March 20, 1847, CG, 4:106; Joseph Lonchampt, Comte, 83; Comte to Vieillard, January 13, 1849, CG, 5: 4. Fabien Magnin, Speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” 661. Comte to Magnin, January 9, 1847, CG, 4:94. See “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847,” MAC. Comte made another set of notes, which are slightly different from the first.

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Thanks to the information from Magnin, Comte devoted one three-hour session to a “philosophical appreciation of communism.”57 More than a hundred communists came to hear what he had to say.58 According to Laffitte, “all the principal communist proletarians of Paris had agreed to meet at this lecture.”59 Comte had to be careful in his approach so as not to alienate these individuals. Comte’s views on communism can be gleaned from his Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, which was derived from his introductory lectures and was published in 1848 to gain a wider audience. Unlike the conservatives, he proclaimed that he did not fear the “celebrated” communist “utopia,” which he viewed as a product of the progress of the revolutionary spirit.60 To him, it was less dangerous than liberalism, which imported a foreign, parliamentary system into France.61 Like many French republicans, Comte distrusted this English system.62 He commended communists for instituting a progressive “politics that was directly popular” and for taking a new, “modern” approach to “the great social question,” which they alone highlighted; this new approach consisted of devising moral solutions to workers’ problems instead of relying on traditional politics.63 Communists also performed a “fundamental service” by showing the workers that changing property relations was more important than gaining power per se.64 Communism was correct about the social nature of property; it ultimately belonged to the community. Individuals did not have the right to use and abuse it as they saw fit. Adopting radical language, Comte wrote, “Because no property can be created or even transmitted by its possessor alone without . . . public cooperation, its exercise must never be purely individual. Always and everywhere, the community must more or less intervene to subordinate it to social needs.” Comte went so far as to suggest that despite the respect that must be granted to private property, it was legitimate 57 58

59 60

61

62 63 64

Comte to Lewes, March 20, 1847, CG, 4:107. Comte to Alix Comte, April 3, 1848, CG, 4:145. Robinet claimed that two hundred communists attended. Robinet [Jean-Franc¸ois Eug`ene], Notice sur l’oeuvre et la vie d’Auguste Comte, 3d ed. (Paris, 1891), 219. Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,”194. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 185. Comte seemed to have in mind the adherents of Cabet’s communism because he mocked the followers of Saint-Simon and Fourier for calling their respective movements after their founders. Comte did not think that liberalism was a universal panacea for every country’s woes. In his youth, he thought that establishing a type of feudal system in Turkey would be more effective than liberalism, which would “probably only make a lot of blood flow.” Comte to Valat, September 8, 1824, CG, 1:129. Claude Nicolet, L’Id´ee r´epublicaine en France: Essai d’histoire critique (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 137. “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847,” 2, MAC. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 186.

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to confiscate it. Capitalists were as subordinated to the collectivity as workers were. Moreover, he agreed with leftists’ view of laissezfaire economics as harmful to the social order; it left workers hungry and homeless. He approved of leftist arguments that higher taxes should be levied to reinforce the link between individuals and the community. Comte pointed out that the name alone of communism showed the significance of social solidarity, which was fundamental to positivism as well. Both believed that “each citizen” was a “public functionary.”65 In sum, he considered communism an important preparation for positivism and recommended that workers adhere to it until they recognized that positivism could resolve social problems more effectively because of its firmer basis in reality. Like other members of the bourgeoisie, Comte worried that the communist solution, if implemented, would upset the “elementary laws of hierarchy and industrial activity.”66 To avoid unpleasant encounters with the government and reactionaries, he proclaimed the utmost importance of order. He also attacked the communists for their ignorance of sociology, which gave them an improper understanding of modern industry. Communists wanted to erase the division between entrepreneurs and workers, but their approach was absurd. Modern industry needed entrepreneurs and managers; it was not possible for every proletarian to be an administrator or businesses to be run by committees of workers. Influenced in his youth by Adam Smith, Comte insisted on the need for a division of labor between entrepreneurs and workers as the only “healthy organization of human work.”67 Moreover, he rejected as too drastic the communists’ proposal that a class or group take political power. Instead, he suggested modifying the present use of power; positive philosophers, representing the spiritual power, should intervene to ensure that employers fulfill their duties to workers. In this way, the proletariat’s material conditions would necessarily improve. Likewise, Comte condemned communism’s desire to abolish private property, explaining that it would be best to establish moral rules regarding the social use of such possessions. In any case, he believed it was a waste of time to threaten idle wealthy people because in the modern age, it would become almost impossible to exist without working. Finally, communists were too narrowly focused on the economy; they forgot other issues, such as the need to make individuals use their intellectual 65 66 67

Ibid., 188–9. See also G´erard Namer and Patrick Cingolani, Morale et soci´et´e (Paris: M´eridien Klincksieck, 1995), 32. “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847,” 2, MAC. Comte to Bosson, January 18, 1856, CG, 8:206. Reflecting again his liberal leanings, Comte supported the “abolition of the old corporations” at the beginning of the French Revolution. These old corporations, or guilds, hurt the “freedom of the worker.”

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and artistic talent for the benefit of the community instead of for their private gain. Comte’s critique of the communist movement was wide-ranging but not at all vicious or demagogic. In the 1840s, he seemed genuinely convinced that it could help his movement. He hoped that positivism would eventually gain the support of most communists. As Patrick Cingolani has pointed out, his approach to private property as a social institution and his notion that capital should be directed by employers but not for their private ends were highly “original.”68 When the Revolution of 1848 broke out less than a year later, he would fend off those who sought to use the fear evoked by communism to gather support for the right. Besides seeking to convert communists directly to positivism, Comte began his course of 1847 to increase his appeal to women, whom Cabet had begun to target in the 1840s.69 Indeed, in August 1847, Cabet published the sixth edition of his book, La Femme, son malheureux sort dans la soci´et´e actuelle, son bonheur dans la communaut´e. Comte took a historical approach, underscoring the “necessity of associating women intimately to the universal movement of modern times.” He pointed out that the mind and the heart had been at war since the end of the Middle Ages. The heart had lost in this battle. But in his opinion, “the so-called reign of the mind” suited only periods of “revolutionary transition.” Positivism would reconcile reason and feeling because it alone recognized that only the mind could resolve “questions posed by the heart.” Indeed, positivism had the “fundamental aptitude” of being able “to subordinate . . . the mind to the heart, according to the necessary preponderance . . . that it procures for the social point of view on all . . . speculative issues.”70 Women, who were experts in the feelings and the social viewpoint, would thrive under such a regime. To emphasize women’s power, Comte even lectured on de Vaux’s influence on him. Laffitte, who was present, remarked on the “profound impression” that it made on the audience, which became distinctly silent.71 Finally one elegantly dressed auditor exclaimed in a loud voice,” It is all the same to me, but it is strange that such a man comes here to speak to us about his mistress.”72 Unflustered, 68 69 70 71 72

Namer and Cingolani, Morale, 33. Cingolani wrote the part of the book on Comte. Pamela M. Pilbeam, “Cabet,”in Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions, ed. Chastain, http:// www.ohiou.edu/∼Chastain/ac/cabet.htm (accessed May 5, 2005). “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847,” 3, MAC. See also Comte to Lewes, January 28, 1847, CG, 4:102. “Notes de Pierre Laffitte sur les confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” April 25, 1886, Archives of Sybil de Acevedo. Comte, quoted by Magnin, in Fabien Magnin, Speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingtet-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” 661. Magnin related that a worker,

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Comte boasted that his lectures reflected the “moral regeneration” that he had undergone thanks to de Vaux – a regeneration that was responsible for prodding him to think more deeply about a positivist synthesis centered on the “dogma of Humanity.” By making him think more about Humanity, his course of 1847 was “decisive” in his development.73 Some illustrious women heard about these lectures and came to hear him. In April 1847, Comte boasted to Lewes, I have . . . a very small number of female auditors; but they are extremely assiduous, which counts more. The most assiduous has been pointed out to me as one of the most eminent female writers at the moment, especially since Madame de Sand is burnt out and . . . discredited. This woman is a relative of the celebrated Bettina of your worthy hero.74

Bettina von Arnim was a well-known German writer, feminist, and salonni`ere, who was a close friend of Goethe, the subject of Lewes’s biography. It is not clear which relative visited Comte’s course.75 Comte may have been referring to the wealthy countess Marie d’Agoult, who was better known as the author Daniel Stern. She was originally from Germany and was a regular contributor to La Revue Germanique. In April 1844, she had written in the Revue des deux mondes on von Arnim, though she was not related to her.76 According to Laffitte, she was one of the “most assiduous” of Comte’s auditors in 1847.77 This woman of ideas wrote articles for many leading journals, including La Revue ind´ependante, run by Sand and Leroux. She had recently published a novel, N´elida, in 1846, which reflected her ideas on women’s emancipation.78 Littr´e met her in 1847 and became a habitu´e of her famous salon.79 He advised her to study closely

73 74 75

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Mr. Guilbert, made fun of the critic for thinking that Comte’s aim was solely to speak about his mistress. Syst`eme, 4:529, 546. Comte to Lewes, April 7, 1847, CG, 4:111–12. Von Arnim sometimes wrote for the feminist periodical, La Voix des femmes, founded in 1848. Joyce Dixon-Fyle, Female Writers’ Struggle for Rights and Education for Women in France (1848–71) (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 11–12. Phyllis Stock-Morton, The Life of Marie d’Agoult: Alias Daniel Stern (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 97–8, 260. Perhaps by “relative ( parent),” Comte meant counterpart. Von Arnim and d’Agoult were among the most famous woman writers in their respective countries. Laffitte, ed. “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 194. Robert Kopp, “Agoult,” in Dictionnaire du Second Empire, ed. Jean Tulard (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 16–17. Rey, Littr´e, 117; Hamburger, Littr´e, 97–100. Later, in seeking financing for the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, Littr´e offered to ask “a very rich woman” for help. He explained to Comte that she had attended several of his lessons, which had pleased her, and might be willing to give him the money. Littr´e seems to be referring to d’Agoult. Littr´e to Comte, May 27, 1848, MAC.

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Comte’s Cours, especially to learn about mathematics, history, and sociology.80 D’Agoult’s daughter, Claire, also became excited about positivism.81 Another woman, who was a friend of Goethe, may have come to Comte’s lectures: Mademoiselle de Haza. She was a Polish friend of Sarah Austin, who had translated some of Goethe’s works. Comte found de Haza very “eccentric” but of a rare “moral elevation.”82 Comte also knew Juliette Ducos, the wife of the politician Th´eodore Ducos. At some point, Comte gave her tickets to a concert, calling her the “best and most gracious woman of the epoch.” It is possible that he met her when she went to his course.83 Marie d’Agoult or George Sand, who had earlier expressed an interest in positivism, may have brought to Comte’s course the leftist German poet Georg Herwegh. He and his wife became auditors.84 Famous for his Poems of a Living Creature (1841), which denounced feudalism, Herwegh had, by the mid-1840s, become the idol of German democrats. Later, in 1848, he was to lead German exiles on an ultimately disastrous military expedition aimed at liberating the Grand Duchy of Baden. Marx knew him but thought little of his plan.85 Laffitte remembered Herwegh very well. When Comte praised cabarets during the course, Herwegh led the round of applause, saying, “There is nothing suspicious about this because it comes from the mouth of a philosopher who drinks only water.”86 80 81 82 83 84 85

86

Littr´e to Marie d’Agoult, August 13, 1850, Archives Daniel Olliver, N.a.fr. 25187, fol. 349, BN. See auction catalogue, Lettres, Documents, Autographes: Paris, Nouveau Drouot Jeudi 27 octobre 1988 (Paris: Nouveau Drouot, 1988), 7. This catalogue may be found in CV 6861, BN. Comte to Lewes, April 7, 1847, CG 4:112–13. She received a copy of his Discours sur l’esprit positif in 1846. See the folder, “Circulation des ouvrages d’Auguste Comte,” MAC. Comte to Juliette Ducos, May (or March) 16, no year, Papiers Th´eodore Ducos 46 AP3, dossier ten, Archives Nationales [hereafter AN]. This letter is not in the CG. Comte to Constant-Rebecque, February 24, 1857, CG, 8:404. Curiously, Comte later took a position similar to that of Marx that premature armed intervention to establish republics was futile and indeed harmful to the larger goal of regeneration. See Comte to Profumo, August 8, 1851, CG, 6:125. Comte never mentioned Marx. Marx did not read Comte until 1866 and wrote to Engels: “I am now studying Comte as a sideline, because the English and French make such a fuss over the fellow. What they are attracted by is the encyclopedic, la synth`ese, but this is lamentable compared to Hegel (although Comte, as a professional mathematician and physicist is superior to him, that is, superior in matters of detail, but even here Hegel is infinitely greater as a whole). And this shit-Positivism appeared in 1832!” Marx to Frederick Engels, July 7, 1866, The Letters of Karl Marx, ed. and trans. Saul K. Padover (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1979), 213. I thank Jonathan Beecher for his help with Herwegh. For more on Herwegh, see E. H. Carr, The Romantic Exiles: A Nineteenth-Century Portrait Gallery (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 54–9. Herwegh, quoted by Laffitte, in Laffitte, ed., “Des Confessions annuelles d’Auguste Comte,” 194. Laffitte misspelled Herwegh’s name as Herweg in his artigle. On Herwegh, see Wolfgang B¨uttner, “Herweg, Georg,” in Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions, ed. James G. Chastain, http://www.ohiou.edu/∼Chastain/dh/herwegh.htm (accesed June 8, 2005).

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As Comte grew in self-confidence and pondered more deeply the political side of positivism and as contemporaries, such as Louis Blanc, Jules Michelet, and Lamartine, began publishing important histories of the French Revolution, he sought to veer away from science. Accolades from workers also made him ponder enlarging the scope of his course to satisfy the wishes of his audience for more general knowledge.87 Mill’s timidity seemed to egg him on to become bolder.88 He decided to develop a new series of thirty lectures on the history of humanity, to be given every other year in lieu of his astronomy course. Developing more completely the material in his twelve-lecture introduction to his astronomy course, this new history course would reveal in a clear, direct fashion the principles of “positive politics.”89 In particular, it would show the “close tie” between the present and past in order to avoid the anti-historical animus of the French Revolutionaries of 1789 and to offer what the socialists and communists could not: a conception of the future without a utopia.90 Like Marx, who worked on the Communist Manifesto in Paris in 1847, Comte prided himself on being able to construct a more scientific approach to social reform, one that would avoid the “utopian” impulses of current radical movements.91 Representing his own system as the endpoint of a historical development was as crucial to Comte’s project as it was to Marx’s. Comte hoped to begin his course on the history of humanity in 1848. After writing the mayor for permission, he had the course advertised in the Moniteur in January 1848.92 Comte gave his first lecture on Sunday, January 30.93 The famous socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon came to hear him. He wrote afterwards in his diary that there were “some things” that he agreed with but in general he found 87

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See letter of Jacquier Eusice, March 2, 1845, MAC. In this letter, Eusice, a medical student, asked Comte to give lectures on the other branches of science in order to give the audience a “complete system” of knowledge. On the length, see Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 37. See Comte’s subtle criticism of Mill’s reserve in his letter to the Englishman, February 27, 1843, CG, 2:140. Comte to Lewes, January 28, 1847, CG, 4:101. Comte to Decaen, January 3, 1848, CG, 4:133. Comte was interested in the utopian thinkers of his day. He owned Henry Macnab’s Examen impartial des nouvelles vues de M. Robert Owen (1821). See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Auxillaire, I, MAC. On Comte’s pride in refuting the “utopia” of the communists, see Comte to Alix Comte, April 3, 1848, CG, 4:145. On Marx in Paris, see his letter to Friedrich Engels, November 23–4, 1847, in Fritz J. Raddatz, ed., Karl Marx–Friedrich Engels: Selected Letters: The Personal Correspondence, 1844–1877, trans. Ewald Osers (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 15–16. Comte to Decaen, mayor of the third arrondissement, January 3, 1848, CG, 4:133–4; De Gressot to Comte, January 28, 1848. De Gressot, a captain of artillery in La Rochelle, was enthusiastic about following Comte’s course after seeing it announced in the Moniteur. See Carneiro, introduction to volume four of CG, lix. Carneiro wrongly implies that Comte started his course immediately without any trouble.

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Comte’s lecture to be full of “idle chatter and contradictions.” In particular, he noted Comte’s attack on savings banks as demoralizing, his idea of a coalition between workers and philosophers, and his preference for fraternity over equality. Comte even pointed out that dogs were unequal. Proudhon remarked, “This is stupid!” Besides disliking Comte’s stance on inequality, he abhorred his position on property. Comte believed property should be a form of administration, but he offered no sanction for its misuse except the unfavorable reaction of public opinion. According to Proudhon, public opinion was “very feeble compared with hell.” It would not work effectively to limit the governing authority, which Comte seemed eager to fortify. Moreover, Comte infused his ideas on social organization with Catholicism and was excessively devoted to rehabilitating the Middle Ages. He turned society into a “fiefdom.” Although he pretended to be for the workers, he offered them only moral dignity as compensation for their poor wages. Proudhon was disgusted, calling Comte “an old driveller, as crazy as P. Leroux.”94 The mayor did not like Comte’s lecture series either, but for other reasons. At the beginning of January, he had consulted Gabriel Delessert, the prefect of police, who wrote to Comte Narcisse Achille de Salvandy, the minister of public instruction. Salvandy was the official who had to give final permission for the course to run. Delessert advised Salvandy not to grant the authorization because the course would be “useless” and “even dangerous.” After all, Comte was “among the defenders of the accused men of April 1834.” (Comte had helped republicans who were arrested after the April riots of 1834; a trial ensued in 1835.) Commenting that it was not appropriate to give a course on the history of humanity to workers, Delessert added, “It seems to me that this type of instruction often ends by falling into politics or socialism.”95 Salvandy agreed, and on February 2, he told Delessert to inform Comte that permission would not be granted.96 The course could not continue. Rumor had it that the queen, Marie Am´elie, who was the niece of Marie Antoinette, had requested that the course be closed down because it was so dangerous.97 Jacquemin, a worker who was looking forward to the course because he thought science held the key to the emancipation of the proletariat, lashed out furiously at this “ridiculous and childish” measure.98 Pointing out the 94 95 96 97 98

P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets de P. J. Proudhon, ed. Pierre Haubtmann, vol. 2, 1847–8 (Paris: Marcel Rivi`ere, 1961), 361–2. Prefect of the Police (Gabriel Delessert) to the Minister of Public Instruction (Comte de Salvandy), January 6, 1848, F17 6688, AN. Minister of Public Instruction (Comte de Salvandy) to Prefect of the Police (Gabriel Delessert), February 2, 1848, F17 6688, AN. Deroisin, Comte, 4. See letter from Jacquemin to Comte, February 19, 1848, MAC. See also Larizza, Bandiera verde, 127.

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absurdity of forbidding him to teach what he had already included in the last two volumes of the Cours, Comte condemned the “shameful negligence of the governing classes regarding the general education that is so justly due to the people.” Like others, he demanded “liberty of teaching” and the “right of association.”99 He went back to teaching astronomy, but his course was soon closed once again, this time by the upheaval of 1848. the outbreak of the revolution The Revolution of 1848 came as a shock to Comte and indeed to most French people. Yet for years, diverse groups had expressed discontent with this “government of elites,” as Ren´e R´emond called it.100 Aristocratic landowners disliked Louis-Philippe, whom they still considered a usurper. Catholics hated the state’s policies on education, which limited the Church’s influence in secondary schools. Students and intellectuals complained about censorship. Workers and the urban poor criticized the government for doing nothing to relieve their misery, which had become more acute due to the famine and depression of 1846–7. Members of the upper and middle classes felt excluded from the government and accused it of corruption. In particular, the chief minister, Franc¸ois Guizot, rejected all suggestions to broaden the franchise, a stance that angered many bourgeois men eager to vote. In Paris, although 180,000 people subscribed to newspapers, only 18,000 could cast a ballot. Dissatisfied politicians and disgruntled middle-class men helped to organize a movement for electoral reform, which raised money and gained publicity by holding banquets. When the government ordered the cancellation of one such banquet on February 22, Marrast and other prominent republicans urged civilians to protest. The resultant demonstrations marked the start of the revolution. The next day army troops killed some of the rioters. Barricades went up throughout Paris as discontent spread. Louis-Philippe was finally forced to abdicate on February 24, giving up power to a provisional government, headed by the romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine and made up of moderate republicans and democratic-socialists. Of the eleven members of the new government, only the socialist Louis Blanc and the worker Albert Martin (known by his first name Albert) were spokesmen for the lower classes. Two men Comte disliked were also included in the government: Marrast and Arago. The former was soon named mayor of Paris, whereas the latter became both minister of war and minister of the navy and the colonies. Later Arago would become president of the Executive 99 100

Comte to Jacquemin, February 21, 1848, CG, 4:136. Ren´e R´emond, Les Droites en France (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982), 94.

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Committee, in effect, the head of France.101 Liouville also became a member of the Legislative Assembly. For the second time in Comte’s life and the third time in history, constitutional monarchy died in France.102 Comte was delighted by the “marvelous transformation” of the regime.103 He eagerly accepted the Ecole Polytechnique’s request that everyone give up a day of pay to help the new government.104 When the widow Bonnin expressed her worries that Comte may have been hurt in the tumult, he replied humorously, “I am not dead, wounded, arrested, or even sick or worried.”105 The only inconvenience he seems to have suffered was that he was unable to attend the opera on February 24. Noting in a droll fashion the historical importance of that day, he wrote on his opera ticket, “Canceled due to revolution.”106 A week later he gave Pierre Laffitte his ticket to the “deroyalized Th´eaˆ tre Italien.”107 Comte welcomed the February revolution because he had always disliked the monarchical form of government, which “as a historian,” he was certain now was “destroyed irrevocably.”108 He had also detested the constitutional aspect of the Orleanist regime; to him, parliaments were imports from Britain and had no roots in France. Like all parliamentary governments, it was a regime “without any principles and without any feelings.”109 Materialistic and egoistic, the Orleanist regime had no interest in social reform – a reflection of its domination by bourgeois interest groups.110 Like many ancient Greeks and Romans, whom he had studied as a young boy, Comte 101

102 103 104

105 106 107 108

109 110

Franc¸ois Sarda, Les Arago: Franc¸ois et les autres (Paris: Tallandier, 2002), 275; Daumas, Arago, 263, 265; Maurice Agulhon, 1848 ou l’apprentissge de la r´epublique 1848–1852 (Paris: Seuil, 1973), 32; Roger Hahn, “Arago, Dominique Franc¸ois Jean,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillipsie, 16 vols. (New York: Scribners, 1970–1980), 1:201; Moses, French Feminism, 127. Popkin, A History of Modern France, 128–9; Wright, France in Modern Times, 118–22; Tombs, France, 374. Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4: 266. Comte to Marielle, an administrator at the Ecole Polytechnique, April 6, 1848, CG, 4:146. See also Marielle to Comte, April 6, 1848, MAC. During the uprising of February, the students were asked to help keep order but were generally on the side of the people. Shinn, L’Ecole Polytechnique, 1794–1914, 61. Comte to Madame Veuve Bonnin, February 28, 1848, CG, 2:138. See Comte’s ticket to the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien, February 24, 1848, MAC. Comte to Pierre Laffitte, March 2, 1848, CG, 4:140. The Th´eaˆ tre Italien was called before the 1848 Revolution the Th´eaˆ tre Royal Italien. Comte to Lewes, April 12, 1848, CG, 4: 149. Comte believed that since the execution of Louis XVI by the Convention, the monarchy had lost its legitimacy. None of the French rulers had had an effective government. Comte to Lewes, April 12, 1848, CG, 4:149. On Comte’s criticism of the regime, see Pickering, Comte, vol. 1, 432–3.

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believed that a legitimate republic was a nonmonarchical political organization that prized civic virtue and the common good. He was like other French republicans in that he celebrated the French Revolution, upheld French patriotism, disliked the Catholic Church, and sympathized with the lower classes. In his excitement over the ethical dimensions of his campaign to recreate a new order, he also asserted that a republic was inherently social and represented the correct vehicle for his philosophy, which privileged solidarity, that is, the inclusion of all classes in the social body.111 As Emile Littr´e wrote, “The revolution of February . . . excited M. Comte,” for the “socialist core inherent in positive philosophy” approved of the “greater influence given to the popular masses.”112 Indeed, after massive demonstrations, the lower classes succeeded in pressuring the Second Republic to promise work for all and to give workers the right to organize. At this point, Comte did not at all feel threatened by the lower classes or the communist movement. Indeed, during February, he argued that all the workers fighting in the “mobile guard” for the government should unite with the proletarians against the monarchy to make way for a republic.113 In a proper republic, everyone should participate in the political community; this approach was one positivism and communism shared.114 Alix Comte, however, wrote him in March, explaining that many people in the south were worried about the strength of the communists, who might take away their property. Whereas she and her father had nothing to lose and were thus not afraid, others did not feel similarly. “Those who have [property] will not let themselves be stripped without defending themselves. Thus will occur the civil war of which I have great horror.”115 Comte replied, “I am committed to putting you at ease about what is going on, principally with regard to communism, which, when seen from up close, is here [in Paris] far less terrible than the way it is represented from far away by [those motivated by] ill will and cowardice. . . . 111

112 113 114 115

Nicolet, L’Id´ee r´epublicaine, 24, 25, 26. Comte was also true to the Western republican heritage that he knew so well from his readings of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Condorcet, Gibbon, Ferguson, and Adam Smith, all of whom discussed the importance of the common good. Larizza, “La R´epublique, la science et les passions,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Petit, 225–6. Littr´e, Comte, 592. Georges Audiffrent, Une Conversation avec Auguste Comte (Lyon: A. Storck, 1908), 12. Frick, Auguste Comte, 42. Alix Comte to Comte, March 29, 1848, in “Lettres d’Alix Comte,” ed. Laffitte, 93. Victorine Boyer, Comte’s cousin, was happy to learn that he was not adversely affected by the fighting in Paris. She asked him to help her brother, who feared losing his bureaucratic job in the change of regimes. See Victorine Boyer to Comte, March 18, 1848, in “Mat´eriaux pour servir a` la biographie d’Auguste Comte: Deux Lettres d’Auguste Comte a` Victorine Boyer sa Cousine, et a` M. Fautrier son cousin,” ed. Pierre Laffitte RO, 3d ser. (May 1911): 184–5.

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[Communists] seek to triumph only by persuasion, not violence.”116 He would not brook fear-mongering by the right. As one of Comte’s disciples later remarked, “Political positivism dates from the upheaval of February.”117 With clubs of all types proliferating throughout the capital, the Revolution of 1848 was significant for developing modern mass politics and spurring Comte to action.118 He immediately understood its importance. To him, the proclamation of this new republic was “in all respects the greatest event to happen in the West since the fall of Bonaparte.”119 Breaking with the past by eliminating the monarchy and introducing new freedoms, it could mobilize everyone’s energies toward the organization of the modern order.120 Positivism could explain how to “reorganize without God or a king.”121 Indeed, Comte was certain that the Revolution of 1848 – “this fortunate upheaval” – advanced “by a generation the . . . coming of positivism.”122 The revolution fortuitously occurred just as he was launching a new phase of positivism, and it seemed to reinforce his view that the positive era was about to begin, one that privileged morality and matters of the heart in order to bring together the members of society. Comte wrote, “The French republic thus tends to consecrate directly the fundamental doctrine of positivism in regards to the universal preponderance of sentiment over reason and activity.”123 As Mirella Larizza points out in her important book on Comte and the Revolution of 1848, he believed that the “institutional transformation realized in February” was the “legitimization of the political role that positivism arrogated to itself”124 Comte was particularly delighted that the Revolution of 1848 confirmed his view, stated in the sixth volume of the Cours in 1842, that the “popular point of view” would henceforth dominate political and social movements and that the people were the best agents of regeneration.125 Influenced by the romantics, he, like other revolutionaries, believed the people were inherently virtuous.126 He was particularly 116 117 118 119 120 122

123 124 125

126

Comte to Alix Comte, April 3, 1848, CG, 4:145. Hadery to Comte, April 21, 1857, MAC. Wright, France, 123; Tombs, France, 377–8; Popkin, France, 130. Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4: 266–7. Larizza, “La R´epublique,” 224. 121 Comte to Lewes, April 12, 1848, CG, 4:149. Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4: 265. On the opportunities afforded by a republic, see also Comte to Barbot de Chement, August 23, 1850, CG, 5:180. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 110. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 280–81. The translation is mine. Cours, 2:685. On this point, see Patrick Cingolani, Le Probl`eme de l’individualisme et de la d´emocratie aux origines de la sociologie en France au XIXe Si`ecle (Ph.D. Diss., Universit´e de Paris VII, 1991), 119. Darriulat, Les Patriotes, 9.

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delighted that the new government gave the people “the double right . . . of free education and free association,” whose denial by the July Monarchy had angered him, especially when it canceled his course. He was certain the people now could freely adopt positivist principles, which he intended to advance more vigorously in his astronomy course and elsewhere.127 But shortly after universal male suffrage was announced, the room where he taught was taken over in March by the government for the organization of elections. His lecture series and all the other free courses on the sciences were stopped.128 According to Magnin, Comte eventually found a way to give the last lectures in an abandoned small guardroom, filled with spiderwebs and detritus from its past.129 This conflict with officials infuriated Comte. He could not believe that the new republic was as indifferent to popular education as prior governments had been. He insisted that the new government go further to guarantee completely “liberty of discussion, which is indispensable to the final regeneration, by extending . . . to oral exposition the proper independence already given to written exposition.”130 There should be true “liberty of instruction” and “right of association.”131 Ironically, although since the 1820s, he had stayed clear of the concept of political rights and tended to mock liberal ideals, he now claimed the need for “liberty” to forge new doctrines.132 His increased stress on rights and freedom reflects the republican discourse of the moment. His republicanism was indeed a key point in attracting disciples at this point.133 Comte’s demand for the liberty to teach what he wanted also reflects the virulence of the debates on public education that were taking place in the 1840s. After having dominated the French educational system during the 1820s, Catholics claimed in the 1840s that their right to religious instruction was threatened by laws limiting Catholic secondary schools and by the rise of state-run primary schools, which originated in Guizot’s 1833 law in favor of freedom of education.134 To Comte, the heated arguments on the education issue represented the self-interests of the parties involved; in effect, both Catholics and anti-clericals used the rhetoric of freedom of 127 128 129 130 131 132 134

Comte, “Association libre pour l’instruction positive du peuple,” February 25, 1848, CG, 4:263. Comte to Vieillard, January 13, 1849, CG, 5:4. See also Comte to Cavaignac, November 20, 1848, CG, 4:209; Mairie du IIIe Arrondissement to Comte, April 27, 1848, MAC. Fabien Magnin, Speech, September 5, 1878, in “Le Vingt-et-uni`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte,” 662–3. Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4: 268. Comte to Jacquemin, February 21, 1848, CG, 4:136. Comte to Lewes, March 20, 1847, CG, 4:107. 133 Larizza, Bandiera verde, 120. Jean-Claude Caron, La France de 1815 a` 1848 (Paris: Armand Collin, 1993), 108–9; Tombs, France, 136.

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education to their own advantage when it suited them. To him, the state should not be involved in organizing education because it was incompetent. Ideally, all state subsidies to Catholic schools and metaphysical institutions would cease.135 But he conceded that the state should encourage areas of education that were usually neglected by private enterprises, namely primary schools, and it should continue to maintain the institutions of higher education originally supported by the Convention. Comte did not want the Ecole Polytechnique to disappear while he was still working there. As Annie Petit has pointed out, the only liberty Comte tended to endorse was intellectual freedom.136 He feared that if a government curtailed freedom of thought and association, it would become reactionary and tyrannical. Liberty of thought and discussion was important to Comte because he believed that individuals would freely embrace positivist principles if through public debate, they could see that these theories were irrefutable and superior to those of other systems. Fear of being discovered deficient explained why other systems, such as Catholicism or conservatism, rejected freedom of examination. Moreover, he hoped that utopian doctrines such as communism would fade away if they lost their subversive appeal. People would recognize that their goals were illusory. In the end, public opinion would be the final judge of what doctrine was best.137 Ironically, Comte held fast to the principle of intellectual freedom despite the fact that he would not allow anyone, even the auditors of his course, to criticize any of his doctrines.138 Besides using his own course to promulgate positivist principles, he hoped to organize other venues. On February 24, the day the king abdicated, Comte conceived the idea of creating his own independent organization, the Association libre pour l’instruction positive du peuple dans tout l’Occident europ´een (the Free Association for the Positive Instruction of the People in Western Europe).139 As usual, he thought in large, European terms. Though centered in France, the organization would extend to Germany, England, Italy, and Spain.The next day Comte printed announcements asking people to join it 135

136 137 138

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In the future, once the universal doctrine of positivism was in place, education could be regulated, but it should belong “exclusively” to the spiritual power. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 108, 156, 157. Annie Petit, introduction to Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 21–2. Lonchampt, Pr´ecis, 82; Frick, Auguste Comte, 360. Jules Mauviel, a well-known writer, was an assiduous auditor of the course of 1847. He made a number of objections to Comte’s doctrine. He remarked that Comte wrongly considered intelligence to be an “obsolete faculty” and sought to eliminate from discussion the “most noble part of ourselves” simply because it could not be grasped by science. He was surprised when Comte told him of his resolution “not to respond to any objection.” Mauviel to Comte, February 21, February 25, 1847, MAC. Littr´e, Comte, 592.

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and become either teachers or organizers. Members of this “political Society” would give free courses in mathematics, the sciences, and history.140 Laffitte would begin the first course in astronomy in May.141 Eager to avoid the appearance of authoritarianism, Comte insisted that he would not impose any program on the teachers. Yet to inspire them to relate their subject matter to humanity, he formulated a motto: “Order and Progress.” This slogan was already highlighted in the Discours sur l’esprit positif and henceforth became the phrase most usually associated with the positivist movement.142 It is featured today on the Brazilian flag. Comte’s Association libre pour l’instruction positive reflects his strong commitment to popular education. Like the radicals, he believed that the common people had to be given the proper instruction to make the political transformations long-lasting, especially if there were going to be elections by universal suffrage.143 The reshaping of the people’s “opinions and customs” represented the first step in the regeneration of social and political institutions. Most of all, individuals had to learn to subordinate their “intelligence to sociability, by always considering the mind as the main minister of the heart.”144 The social and moral aspects of education had been at the core of Comte’s program from the beginning. Now after the proclamation of the Second Republic, when there was a “total absence of systematic convictions,” he was certain that the irrefutable principles of positivism would be welcomed and social reorganization could begin.145 Comte’s plan soon foundered, as he could not persuade the authorities to give him a lecture room for his course. He blamed the antipathy of literary men and metaphysicians toward the sciences.146 Soon afterward, he decided he needed to improve his relations with the 140 141

142

143 144 145 146

Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4: 265. Laffitte to Marcellin Laffitte (his uncle), May 8, 1848, MAC. Comte wanted him to give a course in arithmetic in 1849. He eventually gave a course in mathematics during the winter of 1852 to 1853 at Robinet’s apartment. See Comte to Laffitte, August 13, 1849, CG, 5:52; Annie Petit, “L’Oeuvre de Pierre Laffitte,” Revue internationale d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques, 2d ser., 8, no. 2 (2004): 47. Comte, “Association libre pour l’instruction positive du peuple dans tout l’occident europ´een,” February 25, 1848, CG, 4:263. The original two-page announcement can be found in the MAC. In the Syst`eme, Comte explained that he had first used the motto “Order and Progress” in the course he gave in 1847 and that is represented the “social destination” of his Cours de philosophie positive, published five years before. Syst`eme, 4:397. Berenson, Populist Religion, xxi. Comte, “Association libre pour l’instruction positive du peuple,” February 25, 1848, CG, 4:263. Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4: 267. Comte to General Cavaignac, November 20, 1848, CG, 4:209.

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government, particularly Franc¸ois Arago. In the Cours and in the trial against Bachelier, who published it, Comte had accused Arago of nefarious maneuverings against him and of turpitude.147 Such a public attack on a prominent scientist and politician had already marginalized Comte in academic circles and made publishers wary of him.148 But now that he was about to become more militant and Arago was a very popular member of the government, Comte was afraid to be considered an enemy of the regime.149 A public apology was one way to show his loyalty to the Second Republic and to avoid punitive measures from a possibly vengeful minister. On February 26, Comte requested the aid of Littr´e in publicizing his apology and in persuading Marrast, his other old enemy, to provide him with the means to do so. Comte knew Littr´e was well respected in the new republic. Indeed, Littr´e was offered the post of administrator of the Biblioth`eque de l’Arsenal, which he turned down. Yet puzzled by Comte’s request, which did not strike him as the most crucial issue at the moment, Littr´e was reluctant to become involved. Although Littr´e was still working from time to time at Le National, both he and Marrast, its editor, were completely preoccupied by the recent political turmoil. Nevertheless, Littr´e gave Comte some suggestions.150 Following his advice, Comte publicly apologized to Arago at the next meeting of his astronomy course and praised his character and intelligence.151 Yet not wanting to appear to be courting the government for favors, Comte claimed that the reason he sought to make amends with Arago was to ensure that harmony reigned among all those working for the public welfare in the new republic. He was simply fulfilling his civic duty by putting aside personal animosities and showing respect for people in power.152 However, he let slip to Lewes his hope that Arago would help him regain his position at the Ecole Polytechnique.153 To make sure that “the reparation” was as “public” as the attack on Arago in the Cours had been, Comte immediately sent a copy of a letter he wrote to Littr´e about the apology to various newspapers, including the reformist Le National and the more moderate Journal des d´ebats, which had supported his case in 1842. He also mailed it to Grote in London, Humboldt in Berlin, and Limburg-Stirum in 147 148 149 150 151 153

See Pickering, Comte, vol. 1, 547–60. Patrick Tacussel, “Auguste Comte, l’oeuvre v´ecue,” in Calendrier Positiviste, by Auguste Comte (Fontfroide: Fata Morgana, 1993), 46. On Arago’s popularity, see Ren´e Audubert, Arago et son Temps, conf´erence faite au Palais de la D´ecouverte le 19 d´ecembre 1953 (Paris: Palais de la D´ecouverte, 1954), 19. Littr´e to Comte, February 26 and February 27, 1848, MAC. Comte to Littr´e, February 27, 1848, CG, 4:138. 152 Littr´e, Comte, 595. See Alix Comte to Auguste Comte, March 5, 1848, in “Lettres d’Alix Comte a` son fr`ere,” ed. Pierre Laffitte, 90. The first part of this letter is from Louis Comte.

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the Hague, hoping they would publicize the reconciliation.154 Grote, who was a friend of Littr´e and an enthusiast of the new French republic, was particularly pleased that the man whom he had supported financially had recognized his own ill will.155 Telling Comte that he would try to find a journal that would publish the letter, Grote wrote, This is a move which is a credit to you. No one who knows you will dream of attributing to it self-interested motives. I am even more delighted because Arago never seemed to merit the criticisms which you made of him. But even if he had fully merited them, the brilliant and patriotic conduct that he has shown during these last events should make one forget them.156

It is unclear whether Grote had any success in placing the letter. After being disappointed that Le National printed only part of his apology letter on March 1, Comte sent both a copy of his letter to Littr´e and a personal note to Arago that alluded to “the sincerity of the regrets” that he felt in having “offended” him. He added, “My former knowledge of your magnanimity permits me to count on the plenitude of the pardon for which I am asking you today.”157 Despite his many responsibilities, Arago wrote back immediately, “There has never been anything between us except misunderstandings. I am very pleased that they have ended. I embrace you with all my heart.”158 Comte was “very touched” by this “cordial reconciliation.”159 Comte represented his gesture to Arago as inspired by his muse, Clotilde de Vaux. Thanks to her, he had reinvented himself as a man of great moral integrity without having had to risk his life on the barricades. He was eager for more grand gestures. Therefore when his father and sister wrote to him on March 8, after having heard about the apology to Arago in Le National, Comte was receptive to their bid to renew their relations. Alix and Louis Comte knew Auguste very well. Relieved that he had not been hurt during the street fighting, they told him they were proud of the “great courage” and “noble heart” he had displayed in admitting publicly his wrongs.160 They used the language of honor of the time to flatter him and thus encourage him 154 155 156 157 158 159 160

Comte to Grote, February 28, 1848, CG, 4:138. Limburg-Stirum did succeed in having it published. See Limburg-Stirum to Comte, May 2, 1848, MAC. On Arago’s effort to persuade Comte to call on the Grotes in 1840, see Pickering, Comte, 493. Grote to Comte, March 9, 1848, MAC. Comte to Arago, March 2, 1848, CG, 4:139. Arago to Comte, March 3, 1848, CG, 4:248. Comte to Arago, March 3, 1848, CG, 4:140. Alix Comte to Auguste Comte, March 5, 1848, in “Lettres d’Alix Comte,” Laffitte, 90. The letter at the MAC shows more clearly that the top part was signed by Louis Comte and the bottom is from Alix Comte.

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to admit his failure in their regard. Their strategy worked to a certain extent. The death of de Vaux had already reawakened his feelings of loss regarding his “tender mother,” whom he felt he had neglected in the last years of her life.161 He did not wish to repeat that mistake with his father.162 So promising to forget their past squabbles, he welcomed the reconciliation.163 However, he could bring himself to be only perfunctorily polite to Alix, whose letters struck him as cold and affected. She annoyed him because she had written to Massin in early March to find out how he was. Bad memories of the hypocrisy of his sister, who hated his wife, haunted him. In addition, he disliked being reminded that he was tied to Massin. He informed Alix that his “only real wife” was de Vaux.164 Although the correspondence with his sister was very unsatisfactory, especially because of her constant effort to make him renounce positivism and embrace Catholicism, he continued to write to her, pretending to be interested in her health. the po sitivist society and the re lig ious turn Comte’s actions demonstrate that he was genuinely moved by what Maurice Agulhon has termed “the conciliatory euphoria of the very first days” of the revolution.165 All adult men were given the chance to vote in an important European state for the first time in history, restrictions on associations and censorship were lifted, and clubs and newspapers quickly arose to use the new freedom to mobilize people. The optimism and dynamism of the moment meant that over seventy thousand people in Paris alone joined two hundred or so clubs. Paris was in a carnivalesque mode with people of all classes and parties engaged in a frenzy of meetings.166 In his novel Sentimental Education, 161

162 163 164 166

Comte, “Troisi`eme Confession annuelle,” 25 juin 1848, CG, 4:159. Curiously, another person who had had problems with Comte, Charles Chabrier, also wrote to him after reading his apology to Arago. Chabrier, a former student and currently an army lieutenant, explained that in 1845 that he had received a letter from Massin accusing him of “grave wrongs” and forbidding him to have any further relations with her. Chabrier alleged that these wrongs were never specified, and he had no idea what he had done to offend her. Yet because of his father’s illness and subsequent death around the same time, he never defended himself. He now wrote to Comte to apologize for having lost contact with him and to tell him that he still admired him. It is unclear whether Comte ever replied. Chabrier to Comte, May 2, 1848, MAC. “Quatri`eme Confession annuelle,” May 31, 1849, CG, 5:28. Comte to Louis Comte, March 8, 1848, CG, 4:141. Comte to Alix Comte, March 8, 1848, CG, 4:140–41. 165 Agulhon, 1848, 49. Roger Price, The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Political Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 12; Pamela M. Pilbeam, Republicanism in NineteenthCentury France, 1814–1871 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 192.

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Gustave Flaubert describes the mood in March. He has an actor show the protagonist Fr´ed´eric the clubs in Paris: They visited . . . all [the clubs], or nearly all . . . the red clubs, the blue, the wild, the peaceful, the puritanical, the Bohemian, the mystical, the alcoholic, the clubs where the kings of the world were condemned to death. . . . Everywhere tenants cursed landlords, smocks attacked tail-coats, and rich conspired against poor. . . . there were plans for Fourierist communities, schemes for village bazaars, systems for universal happiness. . . . To obtain a reputation for common sense [in the clubs], it was necessary . . . to use the following expressions as often as possible: “Contribute one’s stone to the building . . . social problem . . . workshop.”167

Comte partook of the discourse of the times; he proclaimed to Arago that the “principal goal” of his “entire existence” had always been the “great social cause.”168 Excited by the possibilities for social reconstruction, Comte was keen to contribute to the new political culture. He was no longer simply interested in denouncing academies or his colleagues. Increasingly militant, he felt the need to create institutions.169 On March 8, several days after the government’s announcement that it would grant universal male suffrage, Comte transformed the Association libre pour l’instruction positive into his own club, the Soci´et´e Positiviste, or Positivist Society. Around the same time, Marx, who had recently arrived in Paris, organized a meeting of the Communist League and helped found the German Workers’ Club.170 According to the flier that Comte distributed after his astronomy course, the Positivist Society would issue writings, petitions, and speeches to influence the government and facilitate the coming of the positivist regime without seeking to intervene in a more activist manner.171 Aware of the recent proliferation of publications throughout France, Comte also revived his plans to launch a monthly positivist review. Just as the “great figures of the Convention passed before . . . [the] eyes” of Fr´ed´eric, Comte insisted in the flier that his club was a reincarnation of the Jacobin Club of the French Revolution.172 Indeed, three clubs created during the events of 1848 featured the word 167 168 170 171 172

Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education, trans. Robert Baldick (Middlesex: Penguin, 1964), 300. Comte to Arago, March 3, 1848, CG, 4:140. 169 Petit, “La Diffusion des savoirs,” 15. David McLellan, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (New York: Harper Colophon, 1973), 193. Comte ordered one thousand copies of the flier. See bill from Firmin Didot fr`eres, March 11, 1848, “Documents: Factures acquitt´es,” MAC. Flaubert, Sentimental Education, 297.

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“Jacobin” in their name.173 Besides Flaubert, historians have noted that the model of the new republic’s political culture was the French Revolution. Franc¸ois Furet remarked, Everything which had made yesterday’s political society had vanished in a trice: the king, the ‘chˆateau’, parliamentary life, the salons and even the questions so passionately stirred up by that world which had been sovereign yesterday, were as if they had never existed. One event had replaced everything, known to everybody because it had already taken place, and one which everybody re-enacted, because the scenario had been distributed beforehand: the French Revolution.174

According to Comte, the Positivist Society would have the same status the Jacobins had had, that of being an independent body advising the government on how to reorganize the state. Indeed, the original purpose of the Jacobin Club, according to Furet, was “to bring together for private discussions certain members of the Third Estate” in order “to develop a concerted legislative strategy.” It was “a unique sounding board for revolutionary politics.” Comte thus based his club on a version of Jacobinism that featured its role as a “debating society,” not a revolutionary party that usurped the power of the Convention and fomented the Terror.175 The fact that he dared to appeal to the Jacobin tradition at a time when the middle classes were afraid of the lower classes shows that he still situated himself on the left at this time. Indeed, he happily noted that the proclamation of the Second Republic was the culmination of the “negative part” of the French Revolution of 1789, for it destroyed “reactionary hopes and illusions” once and for all. Whereas the original Jacobins had presided over the negative part of the French Revolution, the positivists would watch over the last, organic, constructive phase. According to him, the positivists would be as devoted to truth and virtue as their predecessors had been.176 Thus he was sure that “the true Jacobins would be today zealous Positivists.”177 Besides an advisory body, the Positivist Society was the prototype of the spiritual power that would preside over the positivist era.178 One goal of this new organization was to launch the “cult 173 174 175

176 177

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Pilbeam, Republicanism, 192. Franc¸ois Furet, Revolutionary France, 1770–1880, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 394. On the importance of the Jacobin model, see also Larizza, 46–58. Franc¸ois Furet, “Jacobinism,” in A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, ed. Franc¸ois Furet and Mona Ozouf, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, Belknap Press, 1989), 704, 705, 706. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 55. Comte, “Le Fondateur de la Soci´et´e Positiviste a` quiconque d´esire s’y incorporer,” March 8, 1848, CG, 4: 267, 270. A copy of the original flier, printed by Firmin Didot fr`eres, can be found in the MAC. Audiffrent to Magnin, November 13, 1877, MAC.

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of Humanity” by publicly commemorating the different phases of history. As mentioned previously, the word “Humanity” was popular among social reformers. The Saint-Simonians had often referred to “Humanity” and the “Religion of Humanity” in their sermons and books. Comte owned both volumes of the Religion Saint-Simonienne: Recueil des Pr´edications, published in 1832. Part of an 1831 sermon reproduced in the second volume reads: SAINT-SIMON, considering the decadence of the Church and the revolutions which overthrew the feudal organization, understood that on the debris of the double – spiritual and temporal – society which developed during the Middle Ages must arise today a unique society; and he announced the religion of humanity, a religion that is truly definitive, truly one and universal because, regulating the temporal order as well as the spiritual order, it will know how to reconcile all private interests with all general interests.179

In addition, the ex-Saint-Simonian socialist Pierre Leroux elaborated on his religion of Humanity in D’une Religion nationale ou du culte of 1848. Comte and Leroux had mutual friends and had met before, probably at the famous trial of republicans in 1835, where, according to Leroux, Comte had expressed his respect for him.180 Comte might have borrowed the idea of his Religion of Humanity from SaintSimon, the Saint-Simonians, or Leroux.181 Yet there are other possible sources. Louis De Potter, another socialist and a Saint-Simonian sympathizer, put out a journal called L’Humanit´e in Brussels in 1842. He worked with the socialist philosopher Baron Jean Hippolyte Colins de Ham, who, thanks to Littr´e, made contact with Comte in 1846. Colins sent Comte a new brochure entitled La Justice et sa sanction religieuse (1846) that Potter had published 179

180

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Religion Saint-Simonienne: Receuil des Pr´edications (Paris, 1832), 2:64. See also Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Comte owned other works related to the SaintSimonians, including Jules Lechevalier’s Aux Saint-Simoniens: Lettres sur la division survenue dans l’association Saint-Simonienne (Paris, 1831); Nouveau Christianisme. Lettres d’Eug`ene Rodrigues sur la religion et la politique. L’Education du genre humain de Lessing traduit pour la premi`ere fois de l’allemand par Eug`ene Rodrigues (Paris, 1832); Doctrine Saint-Simon. Exposition, 2d. ed (Paris, 1830); and Religion Saint-Simonienne. Morale, R´eunion g´en´erale de la famille. Enseignements du P`ere Supr`eme. Les Trois Familles (Paris, 1832). Another book in his library, called Litt´erateurs franc¸ais, was part of a series entitled Galerie des contemporains illustr´es. The author, Louis L´eonard de Lom´enie, discussed Saint-Simon at length. This volume has no date but was published sometime in the 1840s. Comte, “Troisi`eme Confession annuelle,” June 25, 1848, CG, 4:157. Indeed, Deroisin heard Leroux speak of Comte in glowing terms. Yet Comte did not like Leroux. Deroisin, Comte, 122. In Comte’s library is a 1845 issue of his Revue ind´ependante. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Armelle Lebras-Chopard, “L’Effervescence des id´ees socialistes au d´ebut du XIXe si`ecle,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Petit, 69.

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in Brussels and R´esum´e des e´tudes sociales expos´ees dans la Revue des int´erˆets mat´eriels et moraux, pendant l’ann´ee 1844 (1845), which his colleague Ramˆon de la Sagra had composed. Comte made a “rare” exception to his rule of cerebral abstinence and read both works. He was happy to see that they agreed with his “own convictions about the true nature of the modern situation and on the remedy that it requires.”182 Potter in particular insisted on the need for the disappearance of God because “in his anthropomorphic form,” he had “served the exploitation of the people.” Nevertheless, people needed a “religious tie” and moral sanctions for order to exist. Potter wrote, “The social problem is focused . . . on the search for a new authority” to “save humanity from anarchy.” Without order, society could not exist.183 Comte found his work and that of de la Sagra ultimately too dogmatic – a judgment that rubbed the baron the wrong way.184 Comte suggested that he did not want a meeting with the baron because of their lack of accord on the importance of a scientific foundation, the loss of time a useless debate entailed, and especially the political fallout it entailed. Colins was considered dangerous, and Comte did not want trouble with the government. Nevertheless, not long after Comte read these works, the notion of establishing a cult of humanity and creating a religion began to germinate more rapidly in his mind. Up to the mid-1840s, he had discussed the manner in which religion would be “replaced” by the “positive philosophy,” and he did not refer to his philosophy as a religion.185 But in 1847, he began to rethink his position.186 He claimed that the “final transformation” of his doctrine occurred during his course to the workers in 1847, when he sought to go beyond matters relating 182

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185 186

Comte to Baron de Colins, March 12, 1846, CG, 3:357. Both of these works are still in Comte’s library. Comte sent Potter and de la Sagra his Discours sur l’esprit positif. See the folder, “Circulation des ouvrages d’Auguste Comte,” MAC. Louis de Potter, La Justice et sa sanction religieuse: Question d’ordre social, 2d. ed. (Brussels, 1897), xxx, xxxi, xxxiii. See also Baron de Colins [listed as Corin in the MAC] to Comte, March 8, 1846, MAC; Comte to Baron de Colins, March 12, 1846, CG, 3: 357; John Bartier, Naissance du socialisme en Belgique: Les Saint-Simoniens, ed. Arlette Smolar-Meynart (Brussels: Pr´esence et Action Culturelle, 1985), 108–9. In response to his criticisms, Colins sent Comte an essay that he had written, probably one on the social sciences, which would be the subject of a four-volume work that he gave to Comte in 1854: Qu’est-ce que c’est la science sociale? Colins admitted that this four-volume work, published in 1853, was against Comte’s philosophy, but he insisted on its importance. Comte refused to read it because of his cerebral hygiene. Yet he sent Colins the four volumes of his Syst`eme. See Baron de Colins (listed as Colinso in the MAC) to Comte, August [no day], 1854 and August 23, 1854, MAC. Pierre Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” March 29, 1846, MAC. Comte traced the origins of the religion to 1847 in the preface of the Syst`eme. “Pr´eface,” Syst`eme, 1:10. See also Syst`eme, 3:618. In the Appel aux Consevateurs, he stated that the beginning of his religious construction could be traced to his course of 1847. Comte, Appel, 11.

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to astronomy.187 He called his doctrine a religion after “having seen it spontaneously employed [in that way] by some eminent proletarians.”188 As Bernard Pl´e suggests, Comte might have responded to people’s scientific interrogations touching on matters of religion and recognized their need for a “directing faith.”189 Some of these workers, such as Francelle, had learned to read and write in schools run by the clergy and were deeply marked by their religious experience, even if they later renounced their faith, as he did.190 Comte wished to offer them something similar to traditional religion, that is, a system of beliefs. This system was crucial in order “to terminate a revolution that [was] more intellectual than social.”191 His religion, however, embraced more than beliefs. It touched on the emotions and activities, which were affected by beliefs. Henceforth, he would consider scientific knowledge to be a “fundamental introduction to religion.”192 Comte suggested that his doctrine would satisfy the human demand for explanations and dogmas that he had shown was persistent in all historical eras, from fetishism to polytheism to monotheism to metaphysics; the latter, after all, insisted on the importance of Nature or Reason despite its promotion of doubt and skepticism. He might have been influenced in this regard by Giambattista Vico. Having read the Scienza Nuova in Italian in 1844, Comte thought Vico was a great thinker because he was one of the first to discern the “true evolution” of society, the “natural laws” of social phenomena, and the “cult of the dead” as one of the few universal customs of “humanity.”193 As his disciple and biographer, Joseph Lonchampt, indicated, Comte believed that 187 188 189 190 191 193

Comte to Audiffrent, May 28, 1857, CG, 8:478. See Laffitte’s notes on this course. Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” early 1847, MAC. Syst`eme, 4:xviii. Bernard Pl´e, “Sur le Chemin du salut public: De la Disperson du savoir humain a` la gu´erison intellectuelle de l’homme,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Petit, 219. Francelle to Comte, June 14, 1840, MAC. See also Larizza, Bandiera verde, 357. Synth`ese, 86. 192 Comte to Laffitte, October 18. 1849, CG, 5:98. In a letter to Mill of October 1844, Comte suggested that he broke his regime of cerebral hygiene and was reading the Scienza Nuova to prepare for the third volume of the Syst`eme, which would have to do with philosophy of history. Jules Michelet’s famous translation of Vico’s Scienza Nuova in 1827 had been reissued in 1835. Comte admitted that it had been quite the rage in France and that he had learned about Vico secondhand and by some extracts from his books that had fallen his way. But because he read the entire Scienza Nuova only after having writen the Cours, he claimed it did not influence him as much as some people thought. Yet even he underscored Vico’s connection to the development of sociology in the report on the Ecole Positive. In evaluating his greatness, Comte asserted that he would place Vico above Montesquieu, whose conceptions were not as scientific or systematic. However, he did not think Vico was as great as Condorcet. Comte maintained that Vico’s theory of social statics was ultimately more important than his notion of social dynamics because his theory of progress was problematic. Comte preferred Condorcet’s more scientifically grounded version of human advancement. See Syst`eme, 1:634, 2:589; Comte to Mill, October 21,

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“religion” was one of the universal “elements of the social order” and that “everywhere and always” it had a “distinct organ: a clergy.”194 The idea of religion as an important integrating force in every society was basic to other eighteenth-century writers whom Comte knew as well: Voltaire and Rousseau. By transforming his philosophy into a religion, Comte hoped to give an “imposing universal character” to his “final construction.” In addition, he sought to reach a broader audience, especially in the romantic period, an age of revived spirituality. More people were interested in religion, and religion was associated especially with women, whom he wished to attract. But Comte added a twist to differentiate his religion from traditional ones. “While Protestants and deists always attacked religion in the name of God, we must do the opposite, finally eliminate God in the name of religion.”195 He announced to the audience of his lecture course that the “ultimate goal” of positivism was the establishment of the “Cult of Humanity,” underscoring the “superiority of demonstrated morality over revealed morality.”196 Sensing the workers’ unhappiness with the status quo, he thought he might get their support if he offered them moral instruction, rather than simple lectures on the sciences, which he increasingly recognized had limited appeal. After all, he was most hopeful at this time about creating an alliance between philosophers and workers; by taking up the standard of ethical and humanitarian reform, which had interested him at the start of his career, he hoped to establish common ground between these two groups.197 This program of moral reform might also attract socialists and communists, whom he considered his rivals. Partly inspired by these leftists, the Revolution of 1848, was the first political occurrence since 1835 that truly engaged Comte, and it encouraged his new religious direction.198 Lonchampt later explained, “It was the Revolution of 1848 that . . . constituted the official entry of the proletarians onto the political scene. It is especially at this date that Auguste Comte began his public sermons and the establishment of the Religion of Humanity.”199 In Lonchampt’s eyes,

194 196 197 199

1844, CG, 2:289–90; Segond, Antoine-Horace de Mont`egre, and Robin, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la commission charg´ee d’examiner la nature et le plan de l’Ecole Positive destin´ee surtout a` r´eg´en´erer les m´edecins, CG, 5:283; Cat´echisme, 79. Later, Comte mistakenly told Holmes that he read Vico’s work in 1843. Comte to George Frederick Holmes, November 28, 1852, CG, 6: 431–2; Pierre Laffitte’s reminiscences, CG, 4:221, note CDXXIV. Lonchampt, Pr´ecis, 73. 195 Comte to Laffitte, October 18, 1849, CG, 5:98. “Programme raisonn´e du Discours prononc´e le 24 janvier 1847,” page four, MAC. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 346. 198 Comte to Tholouze, August 19, 1848, CG, 4:174. Joseph Lonchampt to Jean-Franc¸ois Eug`ene Robinet, 9 Mo¨ıse 92 ( January 9, 1880), MAC.

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the Revolution of 1848, the activism of the working classes, and the Religion of Humanity were interconnected. Above all, the cult of Humanity reflects the religious nature of the Revolution of 1848. Whereas the Revolution of 1830 had been anti-religious and its vehement anti-clericalism had resulted in the destruction of sacred objects, the Revolution of 1848 was infused with a religious spirit, which enriched the republicans’ faith in fraternity.200 In Steven Vincent’s words, most political thinkers even on the left wished to “provide society with a religiously defined basis of social consensus. Socialist visions of progress were linked to religion.” Influenced by the philosophes, reformers assumed that “social unity demanded religious or philosophical unity.”201 Like others on the left, Comte used Christian language and moral concepts to assail the July Monarchy and to outline his new society marked by solidarity. Undoubtedly, the death of de Vaux inspired this tendency, but it is important to note that everywhere in France religiosity was widespread. Indeed, Edward Berenson has noted that “saint worship reached an intensity unknown since the Middle Ages [and] religious processions occurred more frequently and more fervently than in the recent past.” He explained, For intellectuals and workers, this religiosity promised the ideal of moral community as an ideological alternative to laissez-faire liberalism; for the peasantry, it expressed the desire to harness sacred power for material ends, and it asserted the right of the community to control religious practice. After 1848 this widespread religiosity would provide a common language with which intellectuals, workers, and peasants – groups separated by vast cultural differences – could communicate with each other.

Comte could not have been ignorant of the fact that the Icarians were proclaiming that Jesus was the first communist or that Louis Blanc, the socialist leader, insisted that his party alone possessed the moral legitimacy to rule because it upheld the true Christian principles of equality, freedom, and fraternity.202 George Sand also wrote in her Souvenirs de 1848: “But where is God? He is not longer enclosed in a golden or silver chalice. His spirit floats freely in the vast universe, and every republican soul is His sanctuary. What do you call religion? 200

201 202

Furet, Revolutionary France, 395–6; Jean-Louis Ormi`eres, Politique et religion en France (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 2002), 78. On the way that the Catholic religiosity of the republicans made progressive democratic principles meaningful and acceptable to a large number of Frenchmen, especially peasants, see Berenson, Populist Religion. K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 12. Berenson, Populist Religion, 36, 37–8, 44, 48.

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It is called the Republic.”203 Even Adolphe Thiers, who had called for the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1845, now argued in De la Propri´et´e, published in September 1848, that religion was the basis of society.204 Watching his rivals while setting up the Positivist Society, Comte urged all proletarians to join his “emergent church.”205 The Positivist Society was to be multifunctional. Magnin explained that it was “simultaneously, a school, a Church, and a party, because it had at its disposition a doctrine, a religion, and a politics.”206 Though clearly the dominating figure, Comte tried not to be heavy-handed about who would be admitted to his club. He retained the right to propose new members but would let existing members reject his candidates. Although he disliked equality because he felt it hid the “instinct of domination” and led to anarchy, he knew it was a very popular notion during this time of revolution.207 Nevertheless, he insisted that a sense of interconnectedness came more from fraternity than from equality; the members should see themselves as a “true family.”208 In the spirit of “fraternity,” Comte wanted the club to be all-inclusive with members from different classes and educational backgrounds.209 Each member of the Positivist Society would have to adhere to the principles outlined in his Discours sur l’esprit positif of 1844 and Littr´e’s De la Philosophie positive. Assuming that most members of the Positivist Society would be workers or other people active in industrial pursuits, he did not wish to impose the Cours on them. It was, above all, to be a club for the people, not simply intellectuals.210 It was important to him because along with his course, it gave him an opportunity to form “truly intimate relations with eminent workers.”211 Comte was similar to other intellectuals and writers in this “romantic generation” – people like George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, Alexandre Dumas p`ere, Jules Michelet, and Edgar Quinet – who took up the popular cause.212 He was eager to create the alliance between intellectuals and proletarians 203 204 205 206 207 208 209

210 211 212

George Sand, Souvenirs de 1848 (Paris: Calmann L´evy, 1880), 109. Ormi`eres, Politique et religion, 85. Comte to Laffitte, September 4, 1849, CG, 5:69. Magnin to Salmon, May 3, 1873, MAC. Syst`eme, 4:484. See also Comte to Laffitte, September 19, 1849, CG, 5:83; Comte to Hutton, August 24, 1854, CG, 7:258. Comte to Laffitte, September 4, 1849, CG, 5:69. See Comte’s comments when Littr´e invited Capellen, Fl´orez, Magnin, and Belpaume to dine with him at his property in Saint-Germain. Comte to Laffitte, September 26, 1849, CG, 5:87. Comte to Tholouze, August 19, 1848, CG, 4:174. Comte to Thal`es Bernard, March 25, 1850, CG, 5:144. Jean-Yves Mollier, “La Culture de 48,” in La R´evolution de 1848 en France et en Europe, ed. Sylvie Aprile, Raymond Huard, Pierre L´evˆeque, and Jean-Yves Mollier (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1998), 167.

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that he had hoped to launch with the Discours sur l’esprit positif of 1844. Using the Jacobins as a model, he hoped the Positivist Society could speak in the name of the people. This posture was important, given that he rejected both popular sovereignty and democracy and founded the legitimacy of his system on science, not the people, though he contended that science was the continuation of common sense. The Positivist Society, as Mirella Larizza noted, was a “bizarre amalgamation of scientistic elitism and democratic populism.”213 Comte sought to make the members of the club feel important. Sensitive to the transformation of political culture, he ordered large coin-sized bronze medals with the name Positivist Society engraved in the center along with the founding month, March 1848. On the other side of the medal were to be printed the name of the member and the organization’s slogan “Order and Progress.” Optimistic about his ability to attract members, he requested that the printer make a hundred such seals.214 It is evident that in the context of the times, he felt obliged to have a material representation of his organization in order to give it a certain amount of legitimacy. In commenting on the fabrication of political emblems, such as playing cards, adornments, and money, during the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt has pointed out, “Such symbols did not simply express political positions; they were the means by which people became aware of their positions. By making a political position manifest, they made adherence, opposition, and indifference possible.”215 Like the revolutionaries, Comte saw the necessity of using tangible objects to reinforce a sense of belonging among his followers in order to add to his own power. The first meeting of the Postivist Society took place on Sunday, March 12. Afterwards, it met every Wednesday at Comte’s apartment from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. He continued to meet with some of the members who were closest to him, such as Magnin, on Sunday nights. (These gatherings did not occur the first Sunday of each month, when Comte went to Blainville’s soir´ee.)216 At the meetings, members would discuss strategies to propagate the movement, membership issues, matters of doctrine, and financial issues. Most members paid dues to defray the costs of such expenses as printing brochures. By 213 214

215 216

Larizza, Bandiera verde, 44, 56–7, 58. Comte to Jacquemin, March 10, 1848, CG, 4:142. A picture of this political seal as well other seals (the moral seal “Vivre pour Autrui” of 1849 and the practical seal of “Vivre au Grand Jour” of 1855) may be found in Jean Claude Wartelle, Condens´e et r´esum´e illustr´e de l’H´eritage d’Auguste Comte: Histoire de l’´eglise positiviste (1849–1946) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 11. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 53. Originally meetings were to occur every Wednesday, but at the March 12 gathering, it was decided that Sundays were more convenient. See Comte to Mont`egre, March 27, 1848, CG, 4:144; Comte to Magnin, April 20 and May 29, 1848, CG, 4:151, 153.

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means of publicity, Comte’s association soon became a recognized part of the larger network of clubs. For example, in early April, the president of the Club de l’Emancipation des Peuples called on the members of the Positivist Society to participate in the organization of a public “banquet of fraternity” uniting workers and soldiers.217 Otherwise occupied, Comte did not respond to this request.218 At the first meeting of the Positivist Society on March 12, 1848, Comte met with seven other men: Pierre Laffitte, Horace de Mont`egre, Alphonse Leblais,219 Emile Pascal, Etienne Jacquemin, Magnin, and Andr´e-Auguste Francelle. Five other men could not attend but were listed in the “first registration”: Emile Littr´e, JeanPierre Fili, Alexander Williamson, Adolphe de Ribbentrop,220 and Modeste-Etienne Claudel.221 By August 2, there were twenty-seven members. By October, 1848, there were twenty-nine participants.222 Eventually, approximately fifty men, including sixteen workers, belonged to this organization. There were no women members. The majority of the members were young middle-class French men who were divided almost equally between Paris and the provinces.223 217 218 219 220

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Suau to Comte, April 5, 1848, MAC. On this club and the banquet, see Peter H. Amann, Revolution and Mass Democracy: The Paris Club Movement in 1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 271–2n54. On Leblais, see Larizza, Bandiera verde, 178. Ribbentrop apparently preferred to use the French particle “de” instead of the German “von.” It is unclear whether he was related to Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolph Hitler’s diplomat. Comte asked Magnin to invite Fili, but he did not officially become a member of the Positivist Society until March 19, 1848. Comte to Magnin, March 10, 1848, CG, 4:143. See Laffitte, “Conversations avec Auguste Comte,” December 27, 1847, MAC. (This date is wrong.) See also the list of members at the end of his “Conversations”; the list of subscribers that Comte wrote up on September 13, 1848, in documents collected under the name “Soci´et´e Positiviste,” MAC; “Liste chronologie des membres de la Soci´et´e Positiviste,” in MAC; and the “Liste chronologique” in CG, 4:306–1309. There are some unexplained discrepancies between the lists. The “Liste chronologique” in CG, for example, is missing Charles Robin, Littr´e, Baron Alfred de Ribbentrop, Lafond, and Pinet. Moreover, Comte said in 1850, that there were forty-five members of the Society, but the “Liste chronologique” suggests that there were only twenty-nine members at that time. Comte may have made the list later and included only those people who were still members at the time he wrote it. Littr´e, for example, is not on the list, although he was a member until he resigned in 1852. What further complicates matters is that in a book written toward the end of his life, Audiffrent accused Laffitte of having erased out of hatred certain names from the records of the Positivist Society that Comte had inscribed. See Audiffrent, A Propos du centenaire, 29. See also Pierre Laffitte “Soci´et´e Positiviste,” Archives of Sybil de Acevedo. “Liste chronologique des membres de la Soci´et´e Positiviste,” MAC. See Comte to Jacquemin, March 10, 1848, CG, 4:142, and Comte to Mont`egre, March 27, 1848, CG, 4:144; Littr´e, Circulaire initiale, November 12, 1848, CG, 4:305; Comte, “Sixi`eme Confession annuelle,” May 30, 1851, CG, 6:104. Johan Heilbron, The Rise of Social Theory, trans. Sheila Gogal (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 255.

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The members in late 1848 were an interesting group of men. There were five mathematics teachers (Comte, Claudel, Laffitte, Leblais, and Charles Jundzill) and five students. The latter were Williamson, who continued to take lessons from Comte; Emile Pascal, who was a philosophy student; Pedro Contreras Elizalde, who was a medical student; and Alfred Ribet and Pinet, who were law students. Presumably these ten people involved in academics (teachers and students) were attracted to Comte’s moderate, anti-metaphysical, intellectual approach to reconstruction. This approach may have also appealed to the three writers (Littr´e, Ribbentrop, and Don Jos´e Segundo Fl´orez), one architect (Alavoine), and one person whose profession is unknown (Lafond). What is more striking is the number of workers. The nine workers who belonged to the Positivist Society in late 1848 were Fabien Magnin (carpenter), Belpaume (bootmaker), Auguste Francelle (clockmaker), Etienne Jacquemin (mechanic), Fili (mechanic and a friend of Magnin), Louis-Joseph Mignien (a mechanic and work companion of Magnin), Jean Penot (a mechanic connected to Magnin), Joseph Bernard (a mechanic), and Eug`ene Simon (a worker, pattern-maker, friend of Magnin, and former companion of Barb`es).224 Three workers were artisans working in bootmaking, carpentry, and clockmaking, which were crafts requiring a high level of skill.225 Most of the workers seem to have been part of a close-knit group of skilled laborers, that is, mechanics, interested in reform movements. Often mechanics, who in Paris worked in small workshops, were considered artisans.226 Fili, Magnin, and Simon had followed Comte’s course in the city hall on rue des Petits-P`eres during the July Monarchy and reflected the workers’ faith that science would solve their problems.227 Whether interested in reform, science, or both, eight more artisans would join the Positivist Society in the years to come.228 As Larizza points out, these workers 224 225

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For more on Mignien, who later went to work in Cuba to set up and maintain steam engines, see Comte to Fl´orez, May 12, 1853, CG, 7:73 These were Magnin, Belpaume, and Francelle. One letter from Francelle to Comte requests aid on how to apply electricity to clocks. See Francelle (in truth Francelle’s apprentice) to Comte, January 11, 1842, MAC. Mechanics were considered highly skilled workers. See Charle, A Social History, 249. On the problems of defining artisans, see Prothero, Radical Artisans, 2–3. Workers brought friends to join clubs and other organizations. Magnin brought in the mechanic Eug`ene Simon, who intended to persuade other friends to join Comte’s club. Fili was also a mechanic. See Magnin to Comte, June 6, 1848, MAC. C. H., “N´ecrologie,” RO, 8 ( July 1893): 335; Larizza, Bandiera verde, 131n51. C. H., “N´ecrologie,” RO 8 ( July 1893): 335; Larizza, Bandiera verde, 144. See “Liste chronologique,” CG, 4:307–8. In 1849, the new members included Auguste Magnin (a carpenter and brother of Fabien Magnin), Th´eophile Xavier Imbert (a tailor), and Auguste Oppert (a mechanic). In 1850, they included Lablanche (tablemaker) Pi´eton

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formed the nucleus of the positivist movement, kept Comte interested in the left and the propagation of scientific knowledge, and reinforced the “ethical–sentimental” dimensions of his thought, especially his “doctrine of solidarity.” His desire to make positivists into a family appealed to these men, who felt alienated from capitalist society with its stress on the cash nexus.229 The fact that five doctors belonged to Comte’s club in late 1848 is also striking. These were Charles Robin, Horace de Mont`egre, Julien Penard, Charles-Emmanuel S´edillot, and Louis Auguste Segond. The last was a librarian at the Ecole de M´edecine de Paris, Comte’s doctor, and the secretary of the Soci´et´e de Biologie. He was also close to Laffitte, who later gave him mathematics lessons to help him become a positivist priest. Mont`egre was a member of the Paris medical faculty and Broussais’s former secretary. He had even been at Broussais’s side when he died. In addition, Mont`egre was a friend of Penard, who also admired Broussais. S´edillot was a famous surgeon, who helped make the use of anesthesia acceptable. He had taught at the Valde-Grˆace and then in 1841 had become a professor of medicine in Strasbourg.230 The doctors were no doubt inspired by Comte’s idea that sociology was like biology in that it cured society of its ills just as medical science rid the body of its diseases. In 1848, Comte wrote to Mont`egre a` propos of the Positivist Society, “We are basically doctors of the French Republic just as the psychologists were those of the

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( jewelry maker) and Egret (miller). In 1851, Amed´ee Hanneton, who was a friend of Imbert and a tailor, joined. In 1855, Henry, a head cook, became a member. Larizza found another artisan, Gries, who supported Comte in 1850. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 122, 141–2, 415. Larizza, Bandiera verde, 143, 146. Comte’s patron Vieillard obtained the post of librarian for Segond, who was in charge of the commission. Comte praised Segond especially for his musical skills. He was both a composer and a singer. He wrote some songs based on the verses of de Vaux, which Comte liked very much. Letter of Captain Anfrie to Robinet, June 5, 1859, reproduced in Emile Corra, introduction to Lettres d’Auguste Comte au Docteur Robinet (Paris: Soci´et´e Positiviste Internationale, 1926), 71; Comte to Audiffrent, CG, 6:117; Comte to Audiffrent, July 29, 1851, CG, 6:121. Mont`egre was a friend of Littr´e and became close to Magnin. Comte to Hadery, May 18, 1857, CG, 8:468. Curiously, Robin was not listed as a member of the Positivist Society, although he joined in 1848 and gave money to support the society’s publications. Comte thought very highly of him, calling him one of the “very small number of these doctors, destined to become philosophers.” See Comte to Laurent, September 18, 1851, CG, 6:161. See also Comte, “Liste chronologique des membres de la Soci´et´e Positiviste, fond´ee en mars 1848” and Comte’s record of payments made to Thunot for publications of the Positivist Society, MAC and in “Documents: Factures acquitt´es,” MAC. See also Mont`egre to Comte, August 25, 1849, MAC. On Segond, see “N´ecrologie: Dr. Louise-Auguste Segond,” RO 37 (1908): 302; Robinet, Comte (3d ed.), 239. See also Larizza, Bandiera verde, 138–9, 160. She points out that Penard is spelled without an accent aigu.

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Constitutional Monarchy and the Id´eologues were those of the first revolution.”231 Comte tried to appear nonauthoritarian, but his controlling personality led to problems. In August 1848, he and one member, the Prussian Adolphe de Ribbentrop, had an altercation that estranged the latter.232 A widower with four children, Ribbentrop was a wealthy baron, democratic activist, and writer. He had contributed to the Revue ind´ependente of Pierre Leroux and George Sand. Comte accused Ribbentrop of disturbing the atmosphere of the club, especially by his long-windedness and vanity. The two men exchanged hostile words. Ribbentrop was sorry afterward and persuaded Littr´e to act as an intermediary with Comte. Littr´e upbraided Comte for being too impatient with Ribbentrop, whose support, he believed, should be encouraged, not discouraged.233 Comte, in the paranoid style that he had displayed with Saint-Simon and many of his past friends, complained that Ribbentrop had personally attacked him, especially with regard to de Vaux. Ribbentrop was too aristocratic, arrogant, and metaphysical for his taste.234 There was obviously a clash of personalities. Although Comte reassured Littr´e that he did not wish to witness any “dismemberment [d´emembrement],” he and the “Germanic positivist,” as he called him, continued to fight during the next few years. Ribbentrop eventually left the club.235 Ribbentrop’s departure must have been somewhat of a disappointment because Comte was eager to extend his club throughout the West to create the “great Occidental Republic, composed of the five elite populations.”236 After Ribbentrop left, there were only five 231

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Comte to Mont`egre, April 5, 1848, CG, 4:146. Mont`egre had been initiated into positivism in 1847. See Mont`egre to Comte, December 10, 1852, MAC. Comte maintained that the Ideologues replaced their rivals, the psychologists, in trying to direct society. See Comte to Carnot, May 25, 1848, CG, 4:152. Although Ribbentrop is not among the members on Comte’s chronological list (in CG, 4:306–9), he is included in the list Comte made up on September 13, 1848. Littr´e to Comte, September 21, 1848, MAC. See also Larizza, Bandiera verde, 195n306. Comte to Littr´e, September 22, 1848, CG, 4:183–4. Another positivist agreed that “Seigneur de Ribbentrop” was “haughty” and powerful and would make feeble excuses to Comte, explaining why he could not attend meetings. See Emile Pascal to Laffitte, September 6, 1848, MAC. Ribbentrop did dare to upbraid Comte from time to time about not paying enough attention to day-to-day political events. See Adolphe de Ribbentrop to Comte, April 15, 1847, MAC. Comte to Littr´e, September 22, 1848, CG, 4:183. Comte, “Neuvi`eme Confession annuelle,” August 20, 1854, CG, 7:250. Nevertheless, Ribbentrop eventually came to appreciate the positivist religion and contributed six hundred francs to the Positivist Subsidy for Comte’s maintenance from 1851 to 1856. See Littr´e’s and Comte’s annual lists of contributors to the Positivist Subsidy, MAC. Comte to Mont`egre, April 5, 1848, CG, 4:146.

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members who were not French by birth.237 Some of Comte’s followers, such as the Dutchman Limburg-Stirum, declined to join his club because they felt they lived too far away to participate in its activities.238 Indeed, most members resided in Paris, which Comte considered the capital of the Occidental Republic.239 Backed by the authority of this club, Comte immediately set to work offering policy papers to the government. Many of these reports were published by the Positivist Society, whose members paid each year five to fifteen francs to defray expenses.240 The first paper dealt with the upcoming election for the Constituent Assembly, which was scheduled to occur April 9, 1848. It was the first time all adult men could vote since 1792. Comte was worried. If the election were held too soon, an “ill-advised assembly” of incompetent “metaphysicians” might take over the government. Giving workers the right to vote at the moment did not strike him as meaningful. He advised them not to vote for working-class members of the Assembly because the system was unworthy of such “statesmen.”241 Proletarians should participate in the political process only after a progressive central power was established. It seems that Comte, like other republicans, wanted more time to educate the new voters to make intelligent choices about the issues at hand and to remove them from the influence of the clergy, the notables, and their employers, for whom they mistakenly might vote out of deference.242 Many leftists feared that the results of the election could kill republicanism. On March 16, Cabet and other militants helped organize a 237

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Fl´orez was a Spanish journalist and editor in charge of a journal called Eco HispanoAmericano. In the 1850s, he spoke about positivism at organizations for peace in London. Besides pacifism, the homeopathic aspect of positivism appealed to him. Pedro Contreras Elizade was a Mexican student who admired Fl´orez. Jundzill was Polish, Bernard was Belgian, and Williamson was English. On Fl´orez and Contreras Elizalde, see Comte to Fl´orez, July 28, 1855, CG, 8:85, Fl´orez to Comte, October 13, 1851, and July 28, 1855, MAC. Limburg Stirum to Comte, May 2, 1848, MAC. However, many members lived elsewhere. Mont`egre resided in Passy (near Paris), whereas his doctor friend Julien Penard lived in the Charente. Having retired in his twenties from the practice of law, Ribet lived usually in the Haute-Garonne in the Gironde, where he had a farm. Before becoming interested in positivism, Ribet had been a strong Catholic. Penot was from P´erigeux. Joseph Bernard lived in Lernes, Belgium. He may have gone into exile there after 1848, for in his letters he referred to working-class socialists and communists. See Joseph Bernard to Comte, January 30, 1850, MAC; Penot to Comte, February 16, 1851. For more on Mont`egre and Penard, see Larizza, Bandiera verde, 155n138, 158n152. For more on Ribet, see Comte to Audiffrent, January 20, 1853, N.a.fr. 10794, fol. 76 (verso). BN. The P.S. about Ribet is not included in the letter published in CG, 7. See for example, Comte to Hadery, June 26, 1852, CG, 6:305. Comte to Laffitte, July 28, 1849, CG, 5:44. See also Comte to Vieillard, February 28, 1852, CG, 6:242. Syst`eme, 2:459.

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large demonstration of 150,000 workers, who demanded the deferment of the elections to late May. But elections were postponed only until April 23. One reason was that the republican government did not wish to seem bent on dictatorship and needed elections to guarantee its legitimacy at this difficult time, when it faced innumerable challenges. Conservatives, who were strong in the countryside, were worried about a working-class revolution and demanded a strong government. Tensions between the left and right and between urban and rural interests were exacerbated by the fact that the government had almost no money to deal with the many problems that it had inherited. Over half of the workers were unemployed and insisted on funding for the new National Workshops, which were supposed to create jobs. On March 18, the government imposed a 45 percent increase in direct taxes, which fell most heavily on the countryside. Peasants objected that they were paying heavier taxes to benefit workers in the cities. This decision would prove to be fatal to the new government.243 Conservatives rapidly began to outnumber republicans. Noting that France was at a crisis point, Comte prepared on April 1 a petition to be given to the new Constituent Assembly. The petition argued in favor of allowing the eleven members of the provisional government, who had “risked their lives in a noble fashion,” to continue in their positions until the republican constitution was ready.244 In his mind, now that a republic was installed, there could be no danger of regression to authoritarianism; the people could easily voice their disapproval if the government acted against their interests. For the sake of stability, it should remain in power. The truth of the matter is that Comte ultimately feared democracy, which he considered “vague”and “subversive.”245 Despite his enthusiasm for the status quo, Comte decided not to send this petition to the Assembly after he learned that the provisional government had engaged in a bit of nepotism. On April 8, 1848, the Moniteur published a list of eleven chairs created at the Coll`ege de France by the new government. A few days later Laffitte gave Comte the list. Lamartine, Armand Marrast, Alexandre LedruRollin, and Louis-Antoine Garnier-Pages, all of whom were part of the government, now had chairs. The new leftist minister of public instruction, Hippolyte Carnot, who had been a Saint-Simonian, also gave one to Jean Reynaud, a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique,

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Tombs, France, 379; Pilbeam, Republicanism, 194–5; Price, The French Second Republic, 116. Comte, “Projet de P´etition Politique a` l’Assembl´ee Nationale Constituante,” April 1, 1848, CG, 4:272. Comte to Laffitte, August 13, 1849, CG, 5:49.

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another former Saint-Simonian, and his undersecretary in the ministry of education. Carnot and Comte were acquaintances. He had attended Comte’s lectures on positive philosophy in 1826. His father, the mathematician Lazare Carnot, had also encouraged Comte in his early career. His older brother, the physicist Sadi Carnot, had bought the first volume of the Cours before dying of the cholera epidemic in 1832.246 Comte thus felt personally insulted that the government, which included Carnot, had created “metaphysic-economic chairs” for its own members. Most of all, considering that he had been asking since 1832 for a chair in the history of science at the Coll`ege de France, he was upset that no one thought of giving him a position at this august institution. This “mistake” robbed him of his faith in the government.247 Comte was not the only Frenchman distrustful of the government. On April 23, over four hundred monarchists were elected to serve in the Constituent Assembly by a chiefly rural electorate. As result, the new government was more moderate, especially because the socialists Blanc and Albert were removed from office. Comte took a great interest in these events. He bought the Almanach de la Constitution franc¸aise, which contained a list of the representatives to the Assembly.248 He also began to plan for the government that would preside over the transition to positivism: “pure proletarians” would take over the temporal government, whose duties would be reduced to practical affairs, while the allies of the workers, “true philosophers,” would guide people’s minds and hearts.249 the commission on the ecole po sitive and comte’s views on me dicine After the election, Carnot was encouraged by Jean Reynaud to create a school for administrators modelled on the Ecole Polytechnique: the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. It opened in July 1848.250 The 246

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On the Carnots, see Pickering, Comte, 1:247, 355, 371, 394, 417, 430, 456. See also Carnot to Laffitte, August 3, 1882, MAC. Marrast and Reynaud were going to give courses in law. See Decree from Minister of Public Instruction, Carnot, April 8, 1848, F17 13553, Archives Nationales; Pinet, Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique, 205; “Chaires cr´ees au Coll`ege de France pour l’Ecole Administrative,” April 8 or 11, 1848, MAC. See note of April 17, 1848, added to Comte, “Projet de P´etition Politique a` l’Assembl´ee Nationale Constituante,” April 1, 1848, CG, 4:273. See Almanach de la Constitution franc¸aise (Paris, 1848) in Comte’s Biblioth`eque Superflue, MAC. Comte, introduction to Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la commission charg´ee d’examiner la nature et le plan de l’Ecole Positive destin´ee surtout a` r´eg´en´erer les m´edecins, CG, 5:276. It closed the next year, due to hostility from the right. Belhoste, La Formation d’une technocratie, 307.

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establishment of this new school may have inspired Comte to ponder how best to organize the “true philosophers” who would help the workers. In August 1848 he appointed a commission to plan the Ecole Positive.251 The commission consisted of three highly respected doctors, Mont`egre, Segond, and Charles Robin. One of the early members of the Positivist Society was Charles Robin. Born in 1821, Robin had received a medical degree in 1846 and a doctorate in 1847. In the fall of 1847, he set up a laboratory in comparative anatomy. Through the anatomist Pierre-Franc¸ois-Olive Rayer, who had studied with him at the Ecole de M´edecine, he met Littr´e, who introduced him to Comte. He even went to Comte’s course in the city hall on the rue des Petits-P`eres.252 Approving Comte’s explanation of the scope of biology and its relations to other sciences, Robin soon called him his “true venerated master.”253 When he launched the Soci´et´e de Biologie in mid-1848, his inaugural paper included an endorsement of Comte’s classification of sciences. Thus one could say that this very famous association of scientists was originally influenced by positivism.254 Indeed, it continued to popularize the term “biology” that Comte had started using in the Cours after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus coined it in 1802.255 Robin’s enthusiasm for Comte’s doctrine went beyond the sciences. He liked Comte’s anti-metaphysical stance, his idea that one could not discuss the essence of phenomena, and his politics, which pointed the way to “true socialism.” Robin also believed that Comte’s “feminine theory” and “religious theory” were important, albeit 251

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Comte, introduction to Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la commission charg´ee d’examiner la nature et le plan de l’Ecole Positive, CG, 5:276. Comte earlier named a commission to make a proposal on how to ensure freedom of education in the new republic. Laffitte, Dr. de Mont`egre, and a mathematics teacher named Alphonse Leblais were assigned to this task. (Leblais lived on Comte’s street at 55, rue Monsieur le Prince.) Mont`egre was somewhat distracted because he was campaigning in the Charente to be elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Their report was never completed. It is not on Comte’s list, “Publications de la Soci´et´e Positiviste,” May 16, 1849, MAC. See also Mont`egre to Comte, March 31, 1848 MAC; Comte to Mont`egre, April 5, 1848, CG, 4:145–6. Victor Genty, Un Grand Biologiste: Charles Robin (1821–1885), sa vie, ses amiti´es philosophiques et litt´eraires (Lyon: A. Rey, 1931), 7, 20, 22, 23, 93. Robin to Comte, October 10, 1849, MAC. See also Deroisin, 109; Genty, Robin, 98; Georges Pouchet, Charles Robin: Sa Vie et son oeuvre (Paris: F´elix Alcan, 1887), v. For Comte’s influence on Robin’s concept of biology, especially his notion of an organism’s relation to its milieu, see Pouchet, Robin, vi–xv. Genty, Robin, 25. The president of the organization was Pierre Rayer. Robin and Claude Bernard were vice-presidents. Segond was a secretary. Genty, Robin, 24. In his first book, Du Microscope (1849), Robin wished to include several pages of the Cours that had to do with biology, but his publisher would not let him because Comte was held in such little regard. Ibid., 28.

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“misunderstood.”256 Littr´e, according to one of Robin’s biographers, called Robin “the most authorized representative and propagator of positive philosophy.”257 On February 28, 1849, Robin and the other two positivist doctors completed their report, which was published in March 1849.258 In the preface to this report, Comte dwelled at length upon the Ecole Polytechnique, incorporating ideas that he had undoubtedly wished to include in the essay that he had hoped to write on the school in 1843. He lamented that the Ecole Polytechnique had never realized the “philosophical intentions of its eminent founders” because it had become too “monotechnical.” Mathematicians dominated the instruction to such an extent that the school was a “kind of algebraic seminary.” Students failed to learn the “positive method, especially its inductive aspect” because they did not study its applications in all the various sciences. Instead, they received instruction primarily in the “preliminary part of deductive logic,” found chiefly in mathematics. Even the teaching of mathematics was superficial, requiring only rote thinking on the part of students. Remembering his frustrations with the education that he received there, Comte also condemned the school for not offering students the study of biology, that is, “life,” in either its individual or social form.259 The result was that students were narrow-minded and egoistical. Because the Ecole Polytechnique was a failure and excessive study of the sciences led to superficiality and selfishness, Comte recommended the foundation of a new school based on positive principles.260 The Ecole Positive, supported by the French state, would offer a broad program of instruction to “true thinkers,” who had passed severe intellectual and moral tests. A third of these individuals would come from other European countries to give the school an Occidental character and to promote wider views. All students would spend three years studying the six basic sciences (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology) and then 256 257 258

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Charles Robin to Comte, October 10, 1849, MAC. See also Genty, Robin, 28. Pouchet, Robin, v. Another edition was printed in November 1850. See Segond, Mont`egre, and Charles Robin, Rapport a´ la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la Commission charg´ee d’examiner le nature et le plan de l’Ecole Positive destin´ee surtout a´ r´eg´en´erer les m´edecins, 2d ed. (Paris: L. Mathias, 1850). Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste, CG, 5:277. Inspired by the Convention, which had created his beloved Ecole Polytechnique, Comte also wanted to reform the existing institutions of higher education that formed doctors, administrators, civil servants, professors, diplomats, and judges. These specialized schools should adopt a more general education and prepare future positive philosophers. During the positive era, there would be no need for such specialized schools because the entire educational system would be at a high level. The spiritual power would “require no particular initiation except the spontaneous cultivation of vocations that were prepared by the common [educational] system.” Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste, CG, 5:276.

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morality, so that they would acquire “the true philosophic spirit” and learn to focus on the needs of society or Humanity. To prevent the “dryness” associated with “scientific studies,” students would also study the arts.261 Graduates of this school would direct the spiritual transition to the positive era and plan the more universal system of positive education that would soon be established. Although many graduates would serve society as teachers, professors, judges, adminstrators, diplomats, and businessmen, most would become doctors. Comte derided his contemporaries who looked up to doctors as “rich celebrities.” They admired them only because they earned “one hundred thousand francs a year”; to earn such a sum meant these doctors treated ill people too quickly and ignored their “Hippocratic duties to treat the poor for free.”262 Instead of being corrupt money-grubbers, doctors should be true public servants. Medicine had fascinated Comte since his youth, when he studied for a short while at the medical school in Montpellier.263 His experiences in an asylum in 1826 and in confrontations with de Vaux’s doctors had convinced him of the inadequacy of medical training, which he found narrow, irrational, and often too theoretical. When his disciple Georges Audiffrent began to study medicine, Comte advised him to focus on his clinical work, for he could learn a great deal from studying patients directly and getting to know them.264 Just as Christians erred in looking only at the soul in evaluating a person, doctors made a fundamental mistake in focusing only on the human body.265 In their investigations of the source of illness, medical materialists, who proliferated at the medical school in Paris, were wrong to limit their investigations to organic, that is, physical disturbances. To Comte, the body could not be completely comprehended without understanding how it was influenced by the mind and by the milieu, that is, the material world and society. In contrast to Descartes, who separated mind and matter, Comte maintained that the main source of disturbance in a body was usually traceable to the “cerebral center,” which ruled over the other organs.266 Like Antoine-Louis Claude de Destutt de Tracy, he argued, moreover, that thinking was related 261 262 263

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Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste, CG, 5:277, 278. Comte to Alix Comte, April 3, 1856, CG, 8:242. Comte decided to go to medical school after finding that his education in mathematics and the physical sciences was lacking. He later sent copies of his works to the library of the Ecole de M´edecine in Montpellier. See letters from the librarian Henri-Marcel K¨unholtz to Comte, October 30, 1852, to November 24, 1856, MAC. Comte to Audiffrent, November 18, 1854, CG, 7:270. 265 Cat´echisme, 60–65, 212. Comte to Audiffrent, November 18, 1854 and December 21, 1854, CG, 7:269, 271, 284. Comte also believed that medical materialists erred when they asserted that the mind was influenced only by the body.

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to feeling.267 Referring to the findings of Gall, who was also influenced by Destutt de Tracy, Comte asserted that the dominant part of the brain was the affective region, which was chiefly responsible for bodily unity and thus health. Comte explained, “In making human progress, individual or collective, consist of the development and consolidation of unity, I feel more and more how it depends especially on the continued growth of the sympathetic instincts.”268 If something was wrong emotionally, especially in terms of how one related to others, one became ill.269 Comte had believed that his mental illness in the 1820s was a function of Massin’s infidelity and that his problems in the mid-1840s had something to do with his frustrating friendship with de Vaux, which never went as far as he wanted. Medicine was ultimately linked to morality because the physical was connected with the moral, which involved the emotions. Comte concluded that benevolence was the key not only to happiness but to good health. Excessive egoism often caused people to become sick. Something was wrong with their “soul,” and they became grim and closed to others.270 Doctors must be not only moralists but sociologists because they had to regard individuals as inseparable from their society. Doctors had often considered how the material milieu influenced bodies; now they had to recognize that it was more important to study the social milieu, which affected people’s brains, especially their sympathies.271 In explaining to a disciple why his hypochondria was fueled by his discontent with his job as a magistrate, Comte perceptively explained, “Despite being parcelled out to different sciences, the study of man is truly unique: the moral and the physical and private life and public life must be ultimately understood only in their total consensus, upon which depends each special prescription.” Comte’s friend suffered from hypochondria because his job of sending people to prison for violating the new press laws conflicted with his “best sentiments” and “principal convictions.”272 Social pressures were upsetting him, making him feel mean-spirited and thus ill. Likewise, Comte later wrote, An insufficient growth of altruism constitutes the secret source of a lot of perturbations that are very misunderstood. Some examples are especially the epidemics that follow political commotions, such as the 267 269

270 271 272

Pickering, Comte, 1:158. 268 Comte to Audiffrent, August 2, 1855, CG, 8:89. Comte wrote that a malady begins “in the affective region of the brain and troubles first the vegetative life and then the animal life and finally mental existence.” Comte to Audiffrent, January 3, 1856, CG, 8:176. Cat´echisme, 212. Comte to Audiffrent, December 21, 1854, CG, 7:284; Comte, “Septi`eme Circulaire annuelle,” January 15, 1856, CG, 8:200. Comte to Tholouze, July 13, 1850, CG, 5:168.

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cholera outbreaks that occurred in this century after the anti-Bourbon upheaval of 1830, the republican crisis of 1848, and finally the dictatorial crisis [of 1851]. The necessarily cerebral source of all grave maladies becomes especially undeniable with regard to these vast perturbations, which materialist empiricism proclaims unintelligible.273

Comte was thus important in insisting that the search for the origins of maladies should be extended to include affective, cerebral, social, and political causes.274 His holistic approach seems very modern. Comte boasted that he had systematized the disconnected theories of the medical school of Montpellier and linked them to the study of society.275 He praised the vitalists at this school. “These vitalists are basically closer to positivism than the materialists here [in Paris] because they have always felt the indivisibility of human nature, in the name of which we will be able logically to conduct them to our point of view.”276 Jack Ellis, a historian of medicine of the nineteenth century, defines vitalism as the “notion that saw the physical organism as containing a vital life force, separate from body or soul and transcending physiochemical laws.”277 In asserting that it was impossible to reduce organic phenomena to material ones and in commending vitalists’ hostility toward materialism (and mechanism), Comte himself might appear to be a member of their camp. However, despite his conviction that biology could not be reduced to physics and chemistry, he was not a vitalist. The notion of a “life force” would have struck him as too metaphysical. As Annie Petit points out, he did not acknowledge that life in itself has an existence. Life could not be understood without taking into account its material environment.278 Agreeing that Comte was neither a vitalist nor a materialist, Juliette Grange nicely sums up Comte’s position: “Life is relation – positivism being a philosophy of relation – it is not a 273

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Comte to Audiffrent, December 11, 1854, CG, 7:278. See also Jean-Franc¸ois Braunstein, “Auguste Comte et la philosophie de la m´edecine,” in Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes, ed. Petit, 168–9. Audiffrent, A Propos du centenaire, 12. Comte to Audiffrent, December 21, 1854, CG, 7:284. In the 1850s he told Audifferent that the school of Montpellier was no longer an interesting place to study because it was a “weak reflection” of Paul-Joseph Barthez, the “best representative of synthetic biology,” that is, vitalism. (Other representatives of vitalism included Marie-Franc¸ois-Xavier Bichat.) Yet it was still more synthetic than the medical school of Paris, whose materialism he disliked. Comte to Audiffrent, May 1, 1855, CG, 8:48; Comte to Audiffrent, October 20, 1856, CG, 8:322. See also Comte to Audiffrent, January 16, 1857, CG, 8:383. Comte to Audiffrent, January 16, 1857, CG, 8:383. Jack D. Ellis, The Physician-Legislators of France: Medicine and Politics in the Early Third Republic, 1870–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1990), 32. Comte to Audiffrent, July 18, 1857, CG, 8:529. See also Annie Petit, “Les D´ebats positivistes sur la notion de vie,” Ludus Vitalis 3 (1995), 161, 193.

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principle, substantial force, or property of matter.” Living beings are defined by their delicate, complex relations to what is going on both inside and outside them.279 Petit points out that Comte always refused to define life itself. “Properly speaking there is no ‘life’ for Comte; there are only living beings who manifest the properties and functions of ‘vitality.’ One should stress the paradoxical position of Comtian biology.” He presents biology as a fundamental science but also finds it necessary to create an “abstract theory of life,” which proclaims that life “can be grasped only in concrete beings which manifest it.”280 In sum, the fact that medicine was different from pure biology had to be taken into account in reforming medical education. The “medical art” was as difficult to master as the “political art”; both studied dysfunctional bodies, the sick individual human body and the unstable social body, respectively.281 Just as biologists should not reduce the living to organic materials, doctors should not treat humans purely as animals. Nor should humans be considered machines or isolated beings. Future doctors needed to be grounded not only in biology but in sociology and morality, which gave new insights into the conditions of living beings, who had to be understood in relation to both their physical and social environments.282 Asserting that positivist doctors would be as distinctive in their holistic approach to illness as the new homeopathic specialists, Comte wrote, If their moral conduct is, as I hope, at the same level as their intellectual aptitude, they will be recognized by the public and by individuals as more synthetic and more sympathetic in such a way as to be able to prevail rapidly. Curing more and giving fewer drugs, they will obtain the confidence of families, which will soon extend from the physical to the moral, because they will reunite the two aspects of human nature.283

Because often unperceived moral, emotional, and intellectual changes led to a decline in health, doctors needed to gain the trust of their patients and their patients’ families in order to treat these individuals, especially if they suffered from “cerebral,” that is, psychological 279

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Juliette Grange, “Du Corps politique a` l’organisme social: De la Philosophie politique a` la sociologie et la science politique,” Revue internationale de philosophie 52, no. 203 (1998):103. Annie Petit, “Les D´ebats positivistes,” 164–5. Cours, 2:775. See also Braunstein, “Auguste Comte et la philosphie de la m´edecine,” 162–5. Comte to Mill, September 3, 1846, CG, 4:37. Comte to Audiffrent, 23 August 1855, CG, 8:103.

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illnesses.284 Proud of coming up with “many new views,” Comte underscored that sociology in particular would help illuminate the link between madness and the social order – a link that Emile Durkheim would later explore.285 With their knowledge of sociology, doctors would also be crucial in treating matters of “public hygiene,” which were important in mid-nineteenth-century France, as reflected in the campaign of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann to clean up Paris.286 In their section of the report, Mont`egre, Segond, and Robin added their voices to Comte’s in criticizing the medical profession. Like Comte, they attacked medical spectacles and voyeurism. Comte condemned dissections for being imprecise, immoral, and even harmful to emotional health.287 The three doctors agreed, stating that human dissections in amphitheaters of anatomy showed disrespect for the dead. Dissections were too mechanical and should be done only if they were going to lead to new developments, not for routine teaching. Likewise, vivisections were executed in an abusive manner and should be supplemented by pathological explorations and experiments to expand the practioners’ knowledge of physiology. Medical education was dehumanizing. The three doctors wrote, “The deficiency of humanity, of which doctors sometimes give an example either in their dealings with those who suffer or by going into raptures over the beauty of certain illnesses, contributes to diminishing their influence and discrediting them.”288 Assuming that most graduates of the Ecole Positive in the near future would be doctors, Robin, Mont`egre, and Segond elaborated on the three-year program that Comte had outlined in his preface. Like him, they railed against the tendency toward specialization and 284

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Comte to Hadery, August 30, 1855, CG, 8:107. See also Comte to Audiffrent, November 1, 1855, CG, 8:135. Here Comte was speaking from experience because he always thought that the doctors who treated him in his asylum had not truly understood him. Comte to Audiffrent, March 9, 1851, CG, 6:31. Still angry about his internment in an asylum, Comte condemned psychiatrists for their “mediocre minds” and “vulgar hearts.” Syst`eme, 1:568. Comte to Hadery, August 30, 1855, CG, 8:107. Reflecting the time he spent at the medical school Montpellier, Comte frequently expressed his “aversion for dissections, especially human ones, and principally ones involving the lower classes.” See Comte to Audiffrent, July 27, 1854, CG, 7:234. Because they were immoral, Comte believed dissections should be performed chiefly on people who committed suicide. Even dissections of “our unhappy zoological subordinates” – animals – should be restrained. Comte himself had never done any dissections and believed he could do a good job of reconstructing the body in space due to his “strong mathematical education.” See Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1851, CG, 6:70. See also Emile Pascal to Laffitte, September 6, 1848, MAC; Audiffrent to Comte, December 8, 1854, MAC. Segond, Mont`egre, Robin, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste, CG, 5:291.

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advocated a broad program of study.289 Even to be admitted into the Ecole Positive, students would need to display proficiency in three languages, literature, poetry, music, design, and history. By the end of their three years, students would know all five principal modern European languages as well as Greek and Latin. Like Comte, the three doctors Segond, Mont`egre, and Robin considered the study of literature, art, and history to be as necessary as that of science. Cultivation of the imagination and feelings was at least important as that of the sciences even for medical students. Only in this way could students develop general views and generous feelings. Upon graduation, students would spend three years as externs in hospitals and would spend more time with patients than was currently the case. Students would be watched to see how well they dealt with these sick people, for part of their preparation included reinforcing their morality. Moreover, graduates of the Ecole Positive could work only in public hospitals; they would be forbidden to have private clients in order to avoid the corrupt practices associated with wealth. In short, Comte and the three physicians who wrote the report wished to regenerate the medical profession to make doctors more knowledgeable about the whole human condition and thereby prepare them for an important role in the Occidental Republic, the positive regime of the future. Mont`egre, Segond, and Robin wrote, Initiated into the more intimate secrets of the family, . . . they [will] replace the old action of the priest. We have seen that in the past medical science emanated from the sacerdotal corps, then from philosophers; now medicine, which is today mercenary, must become philosophical again in order to become worthy one day of exercising a priestly function vis-`a-vis Humanity.290

Comte hoped that doctors who were given a positive, general education would become “true philosophers,” and as such, accessories to the spiritual power.291 In 1851, he went further, affirming that regenerated doctors could become positivist priests.292 As Mont`egre, Segond, and Robin suggested, doctors had in some respects replaced 289 290 291 292

They envisioned the creation of approximately seventeen Ecoles Positives (each with no more than 500 students) throughout France. Segond, Mont`egre, Robin, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste, CG, 5:281–2. Comte, introduction to Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste, CG, 5:279. See also Syst`eme, 1:652. “Pr´eface,” Syst`eme, 1:17. See also Comte to Robinet, February 27, 1855, CG, 8:30. In this letter, he wrote, “The medical office is today the one which best permits the transformation of a career into a priesthood.”

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priests in being confidential consultants to the family; now they needed to earn that position by becoming better medical practioners and better people. The nature of the medical profession was the subject of much debate in the nineteenth century as it is today. Comte’s approach appealed to many physicians, though he himself admitted he did nothing to attract them in particular and seemed indeed surprised at his success among these men.293 By 1855, a third of the members of the Positivist Society were doctors.294 Julien Penard, a friend of Mont`egre and a doctor in the Charente, told Comte that he was happy to be part of the Society because it made him feel he was a member of a “little regenerated family,” working to make people “better” individuals concerned about others.295 Besides Penard, Mont`egre, Segond, and Robin, positivism attracted others who became doctors or were interested in medicine: Littr´e, George Henry Lewes, Jacquier Eusice,296 Pedro Contreras Elizalde,297 S´edillot,298 Meynier,299 Neil Arnott, Dr. Radford,300 Horace Binney Wallace, Georges Audiffrent, Jean-Franc¸ois-Eug`ene Robinet,301 293 294 295 296

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Comte to Hadery, September 11, 1854, CG, 7:261. Comte to Hadery, August 10, 1855, CG, 8:91. Penard to Comte, October 29, 1848 and June 9, 1851, MAC. Jacquier Eusice, a friend of Robinet, was a medical student who was hurt fighting for the republic in February 1848, exiled after June 1848, and later hired as a surgeon in the Ottoman army. Eusice attended Comte’s astronomy course. He wanted to be admitted into the Positivist Society but could not attend the meetings. Jacquier Eusice to Comte, January 5, 1850; April 23, 1851, MAC; Robinet to Comte, June 8, 1854, MAC. Contreras Elizalde was a medical student. He was born in Andalusia in October 1825, but he was of Mexican nationality. When he returned to Mexico in 1855, Comte hoped he would become a positivist missionary in Latin America. He did have an important career, but not exactly in the way Comte hoped. Contreras Elizalde married President Benito Ju´arez’s daughter and became a member of the Mexican republic’s Constituent Assembly. He made many contributions to the Mexican educational system. See Carneiro and Arbousse-Bastide, footnote DXLIX, pages 227–8; Larizza, Bandiera verde, 170–71. S´edillot wrote to Comte in 1848 to tell him about the medical brochure he had written and his support for positivism. S´edillot to Comte, March 4, 1848, MAC. See also Larizza, “Le Premier Rayonnement,” 89. Meynier followed Blainville’s course the same year Comte did. He became a doctor and a republican activist in Marseille. Meynier was introduced to Audiffrent in Aix by Denis Gaulin, a young advocate of positivism. Audiffrent found Meynier to be favorable to the positivist religion. Audiffrent wrote to Comte, “He is the first revolutionary whom I have seen admit without objection the necessity of letting superior people choose their successors. He told me, ‘Your positivism is even more radical than what I dare to conceive.’” Audiffrent to Comte, December 2, 1852, MAC. See also Audiffrent to Comte, January 27, 1853, MAC. On Radford, who lived in England, see Hutton to Comte, November 12, 1854, MAC. Robinet was close to several other doctors in the Positivist Society: Claude Carr´e, JeanS´eraphin Bazalgette, and Edouard Foley. The latter was his best friend. See Robinet to Comte, June 2 and June 8, 1854, MAC.

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Ren´e Cousin,302 John Fisher, Arnault Costallat,303 Edouard Foley, Jean-S´eraphin Bazalgette, Auguste Hermann Ewerbeck, Eug`ene S´em´erie, Ernest Delbet,304 Claude Carr´e,305 Charles Marc Sauria, Lefebvre,306 Richard Congreve,307 John Henry Bridges, Requin,308 Alfred Sabatier, Fortun´e Lapierre, Bruno Jacques B´eraud,309 and a group of doctors from Rennes, including Revault and Goupil.310 Pierre Franc¸ois Rayer and his friend, Claude-Franc¸ois Lallemand, both of whom were prominent physicians and members of the Academy of Sciences, gave Comte money from time to time.311 Littr´e and Robin collaborated on a Dictionnaire de M´edecine (1855), which one scholar called “the medical code of the positivist doctrine.”312 After Comte’s death, two others doctors contributed to his movement. Dr. Gr´egoire Wyrouboff helped Littr´e direct the positivist journal Philosophie positive. Dr. Georges Clemenceau, a friend of S´em´eri´e, translated Mill’s Auguste Comte and Positivism into French 302 303

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308 309

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Ren´e Cousin was from Seine-et-Marne. Comte to Laurent, June 11, 1852, CG, 6:299. Costallat was from Bagn`ere de Bigorre in southwest France. He was interested in astronomy and later pushed to create an observatory in the Pyrennees. See Comte to Fl´orez, October 26, 1851. For more on him, see Larizza, Bandiera verde, 415n101. Delbet was Cousin’s brother-in-law. He first became interested in positivism after reading one of Littr´e’s articles in Le National. As a student, he met Comte, who advised him to study medicine because the training was encyclopedic in nature. At the end of his studies, he worked with Fr´ed´eric Leplay and at first thought the sociologist was applying positivist ideas. But ultimately, he concluded that Leplay’s ideas were incomplete and narrow compared with Comte’s. E. Delbet, Cinquanti`eme Anniversaire de la mort d’Auguste Comte (Paris: La Soci´et´e Positiviste Internationale, 1907), 16–19. Carr´e was sometimes Comte’s doctor. He sent him a notice of his son’s birth in 1855. See Faire-Parts de Naissances, MAC. Robinet, Comte (3d. ed.), 239. After his retirement from Oxford, where he taught history, Richard Congreve followed Comte’s advice and studied medicine. He and Bridges did not become members of the Positivist Society until after Comte’s death, though they were in communication with him at the end of his life. “Soci´ete Positiviste: Liste des Membres,” compiled by Comte, Isidore Finance, and Laffitte, MAC. Packet on the “Positivist Subsidy,” MAC. George Henry Lewes refers to the surgeon B´eraud as a disciple in Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences: Being an Exposition of the Principles of the “Cours de philosophie positive” of Auguste Comte (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), v. About the doctors from Rennes, see Comte to Mill, September 3, 1846, CG, 4:37; packet on the “Positivist Subsidy,” MAC. Mont`egre wrote in 1851 that a doctor in his town, Dr. Dufour, could be counted on as a positivist, but nothing more is known about him. October 4, 1851, MAC. Rayer gave one hundred francs and Lallemand contributed two hundred francs. Packet on the “Positivist Subsidy,” MAC. Emile Chauffard, cited in Patrick Jucker-Kupper, “Charles Robin.” In Who Named It?, ed. Ole Daniel Enersen, http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/23.html (accessed January 8, 2007).

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in 1868.313 It is no wonder then that Comte counted on “the elite of this class as the natural breeding ground of the new philosophers” and recommended that young positivists enter the medical profession.314 the commission on work Comte appointed another commission to treat issues relating to labor. It was composed of three workers: Fabien Magnin, a carpenter and friend of Comte; Etienne Jacquemin, a mechanic and friend of Magnin; and Nicolas Belpaume, a shoemaker and friend of Littr´e.315 They prepared a report on May 24, nine days after a massive demonstration in the capital that increased social tensions. After the report was accepted by the Positivist Society, it was published on June 5, 1848.316 The tone of the report was defensive. The authors denied Thomas Malthus’s “immoral theories,” which suggested that poverty was a natural condition because the workers were undisciplined and had too many children. To Magnin and his friends, poverty and indeed most industrial troubles were caused by society’s and especially the industrialists’ “lack of foresight in the direction of work and public wealth.” This blindness was reinforced by unfounded bourgeois “prejudices” that workers were lazy. Repeating the cry of many radical and socialist workers, Magnin and his colleagues insisted that poverty was caused chiefly by a lack of jobs. This dearth of opportunities for work was illogical because people constantly consumed in order to satisfy their needs, and such a situation demanded high levels of production and thus employment.317 Comte later praised 313 314 315 316

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Annie Petit, “Biologie et sociologie positives,” La Biologia: Parametro epistemologico de XIX secolo, ed. Maria Donzelli (Naples: Liguori, 2003), 118; Nicolet, L’Id´ee r´epublicaine, 231. Comte to Audiffrent, May 6, 1851, CG, 6:70. See also Comte to Robinet, August 19, 1851, CG, 6:144; Comte to Audiffrent, August 2, 1855, CG, 8:89. Jacquemin was a friend of Magnin but hardly knew Belpaume. See Magnin to Comte, May 31, 1848, MAC; Jacquemin to Comte, August 31, 1852, MAC. Comte to Magnin, May 29, 1848, CG, 4:152. Comte consulted a printer named E. Thunot in late May 1848 about publishing this report as a brochure. In early June, Thunot printed six hundred copies. See E. Thunot to Comte, May 30, November 8, 1848, MAC. See also Comte, “Publications de la Soci´et´e Positiviste,” May 16, 1849, MAC. There were at least three editions of this report. The third edition of March 1850 is in Vaillant, ed., “Une Page inconnue de l’histoire de la R´evolution de 1848,” RO, 11 (September 1883), 198–208. Magnin, Jacquemin, and Belpaume, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la Commission Charg´ee d’Examiner la Question du Travail, March 8, 1850, CG, 274, 278. Comte also condemned Malthus’s theories as “immoral” for granting an “apparent scientific sanction to the shameful antipathy of the governing classes” in England toward schemes to help the working class. See Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 178. In Comte’s library is a French translation of William Godwin’s refutations of Malthus’s theories: Recherches sur

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the “plebian statesman” Magnin for giving positivism the aphorism “Work can never be lacking.”318 According to Magnin, Jacquemin, and Belpaume, the solution to the social question was to rely on “enlightened” state intervention. The state should use public funds to create viable work opportunities for the unemployed. Perhaps in a subtle allusion to the controversial National Workshops, which were devising make-work projects to satisfy the demands of thousands of desperate laborers, Magnin, Belpaume, and Jacquemin insisted that the state should not create “artificial works,” which, though justified in “revolutionary crises,” were “ruinous and degrading” in the long run. The public works projects should not be menial but useful to society. If the government realized in a meaningful way its commitment to securing “the right to work” – the main demand of the people who took to the barricades in February – many other issues would be resolved: the fear of foreign workers, the lack of inventions, the use of war as a means of coping with “industrial crises,” the abandonment of the countryside, and the “shameful dispute” between Paris and the colonies.319 Magnin and his colleagues, moreover, emphasized that there should be public meetings of chiefly proletarian citizens to discuss and survey the work projects. The model of these “popular assemblies” seems to have been the Luxembourg Commission, which was created after the events of February under the direction of Louis Blanc to deal particularly with the worsening problem of unemployment.320 A concession to socialists, the Luxembourg Commission consisted of an elected assembly of workers that analyzed the social question, offered recommendations to the government, and arbitrated a number of conflicts.321 Such worker participation was what Magnin and his colleagues wished to reproduce in the positive republic.322 Finally, the positivist commission recommended that workers making a tour of the provinces be invited to the meetings to give their valuable advice. This suggestion refers to the practice whereby

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la population et sur la facult´e d’accroissement de l’esp`ece humaine. He bought it October 20, 1847. See Comte’s Biblioth`eque Usuel, I, MAC. Syst`eme, 4:455. See also Comte to Hadery, May 15, 1856, CG, 8:255. Magnin, Jacquemin, and Belpaume, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la Commission Charg´ee d’Examiner la Question du Travail, March 8, 1850, CG, 278. See also Scott, Only Paradoxes, 58. Magnin, Jacquemin, and Belpaume, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la Commission Charg´ee d’Examiner la Question du Travail, March 8, 1850, CG, 277, 279. Pilbeam, Republicanism, 205. Magnin, Belpaume, and Jacquemin even quoted the testimony given by a worker to the “commissioners charged with making an inquiry into the situation of the workers.” Their statement reveals that they followed the work of the Luxembourg Commission very closely. Magnin, Jacquemin, and Belpaume, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la Commission Charg´ee d’Examiner la Question du Travail, March 8, 1850, CG, 276.

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young artisans usually made a tour of France to hone their skills and become part of the community of workers involved in the same trade. Although supported by compagnonnages, that is, workers’ societies, this tradition was disappearing in the 1840s.323 Magnin, Belpaume, and Jacquemin belonged to a dying artisanal culture and were trying to highlight its virtues, especially its associationism.324 Even George Sand sensed its end; she asked the minister of public instruction, Hippolyte Carnot, to send workers on a tour of all the departments to politicize them and make them more leftist.325 In his Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, Comte went further, insisting that the system of apprenticeship tours be extended throughout the West to develop workers’ feeling of brotherhood.326 Reflecting his faith in the working class, Comte was proud of the positivist report, which he called superior to “all the volumes consecrated to the so-called science of the economists.”327 It showed that “the reason of commoners” was better than “the corrupt culture of our educated people.”328 Yet Comte’s comments in the preamble to the report and in his correspondence reveal that his stance was more moderate than that of the report’s three writers. Instead of celebrating popular assemblies, he stressed modern industry’s need for a universal educational system to provide excellent instruction and moral principles to everyone.329 In addition, modern industry required a new spiritual power to arbitrate labor disputes. In this way, conflicts could be regulated by moral codes instead of legal ones. Comte wished to eliminate lawyers, for he believed they would work against the kind of government he favored.330 Also, reflecting the liberal biases of his youth, he did not like the way “metaphysical” laws were used to restrict industry.331 He opposed the centralized government’s proclivity to regulate industry, which he believed hurt the economy.332 323 324

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Mark Traugott, ed., The French Worker: Autobiographies from the Early Industrial Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 126n10, 127n12. Jacquemin indeed alluded to his “slightly advanced” age in one letter. See Jacquemin to Comte, March 23, 1848, MAC. See also Cynthia Maria Truant, The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 11. Perrot, introduction to Politique et pol´emiques, 26. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 210. Comte, Pr´eambule, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la Commission Charg´ee d’Examiner la Question du Travail, March 8, 1850, CG, 4:274. Comte to Magnin, May 29, 1848, CG, 4:152. On this point, see Comte, Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 44. Comte to Laffifte, September 19, 1849, CG, 5:84. Comte gave many details on how he would do away with lawyers, judges, notaries, and so forth. Comte, Pr´eambule, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la Commission Charg´ee d’Examiner la Question du Travail, March 8, 1850, CG, 4:273–4. On Comte’s earlier attitudes toward laissez-faire capitalism, see Pickering, Comte, 1:109–12. He thus disliked the Bank of France. Comte to Deullin, April 20, 1854, CG, 7:206.

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Yet at the same time, he did not condone liberal capitalists’ and political economists’ indifference to the people’s interests. He did not believe that the market would benefit society if left entirely to its own devices. In his mind, the spiritual power could not intervene directly in the material realm without seeming oppressive, but it could use subtle pressure on significant individuals’ minds and hearts to advance public welfare.333 Both he and his commission seemed to agree on at least one salient point: workers should make industrialists more aware of the evils of capitalism. Yet he did not go as far in planning public works projects as Magnin, Belpaume, and Jacquemin did. He tended to be more theoretical and idealistic, whereas they sought to be practical. But perhaps because his stance and theirs complemented one other, he was convinced that he was successfully forging an alliance between the workers and philosophers. the occide ntal po sitive committe e Comte’s idealism in 1848 is also apparent in his effort to create the Occidental Positive Committee (Comit´e Positif Occidental). The closing pages of the Cours had briefly alluded to this committee, which he considered the “permanent council of the Positive Church.”334 In his Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, he elaborated on the significance of the Occident. He believed that the five Western European countries – France, Italy, Germany, England, and Spain – had been a “fundamental community” during the Middle Ages and had constituted since Charlemagne the “grand Occidental Republic.” (This community also included “annexes,” such as Holland, Portugal, Greece, and Poland.) Finding the growing antipathies among nations disruptive, he shared the nostalgia for the Middle Ages exhibited by conservative thinkers and the romantics. Although he believed that the Protestant Reformation and the decline of chivalry had weakened the sense of solidarity that had once existed among the Western European peoples, Comte was certain that the predominance of industrial life, the similar aesthetic evolution toward romanticism, and the spread of scientific advances had reawakened their spirit of confraternity. He used communitarian language to stress his opinion that despite their “natural” national differences, which they would preserve under positivism, these Western countries composed a “great modern family.” Maintaining Enlightenment cosmpolitanism and challenging the nineteenth-century tendency toward nationalism, Comte explained, “Despite the absence of systematic ties equivalent to those of the Middle Ages, the common ascendancy of true modern customs, which 333

Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 115.

334

Cours, 2:696.

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are both pacific and rational, has already created . . . a spontaneous confraternity . . . which no longer permits people to imagine any part of the final regeneration as purely national.” Many republicans in France shared Comte’s distaste for the xenophobia and exclusivity inherent in nationalism, although they advocated this creed. They hoped that once constituted on the basis of fraternity, nation-states would create a true universal republic. Comte did not approve of their nationalist zeal, though he too dreamed of a large-scale republic. Nevertheless, despite his dislike of nationalism, Comte believed that since the fall of Rome and especially since the reign of Charlemagne, France had been the “center” of “this elite of humanity.” Having destroyed the old regime, it should now take the lead in reorganizing Europe. According to him, the fact that the Revolution of 1848 had spread from France to other countries demonstrated that all nations were experiencing an identical “crisis,” which demanded a similar resolution, one that the French could produce.335 The Occidental Positive Committee should address this crisis. Comte had made up a preliminary list of the committee members on February 6, 1847, which he slightly modified on December 16.336 Now that he thought that the triumph of positivism was imminent, he modified the plan again on May 26, 1848.337 Whereas in 1842 and even in 1847, the central committee was to have at most thirty members, Comte now insisted that it have thirty-six. Reflecting his sensitivity to the “woman question,” the six new members would be women. On the committee would sit eight Frenchmen and two Frenchwomen, seven Englishmen and one Englishwoman, six German men and one German woman, five Italian men and one Italian woman, and four Spanish men and one Spanish woman.338 The fact that Comte allowed almost 20% of the members of the primary positivist committee to be women suggests that the demands of Jeanne Deroin, Eug´enie Niboyet, D´esir´ee Gay, Suzanne Voilquin, Pauline Roland, and other feminists of 1848 for a voice in public affairs had an effect.339 Indeed, he may have had contact with Pauline Roland, who was a friend of Thal`es Bernard’s sister. In 1847, Bernard told Comte of her “remarkable intelligence” and tried to get 335

336 337 338 339

Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 116, 117, 118, 121; manuscript of the prospectus for the Revue Occidentale, entitled “Subside positiviste pour fonder la Revue Occidentale,” August 25, 1848, MAC. On republicanism in France at this time, see Darriulat, Les Patriotes, 9, 117–18, 192. See “Composition initiale du Comit´e Positif Occidental,” February 6, 1847, December 16, 1847, MAC. Comte, “Composition initiale du Comit´e Positif Occidental destin´e a` r´egulariser l’ensemble du d´eveloppement, mental et social, du positivisme,” CG, 4:280-81. Whereas in 1842 there were six Italians and five Germans, now he insisted on having six Germans and five Italians. Evidently Comte’s opinion of the Germans had risen. Scott, Only Paradoxes, 82; Moses, French Feminism, 128.

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him to help her find a publisher. She hoped to translate into French Lewes’s Biographical History of Philosophy.340 By 1848, Comte would have agreed with the sentiment expressed in the first issue of the feminist Voix des femmes: “It is a mistake to believe that by improving the lot of men, that by that fact alone, the lot of women is improved.”341 Women had to become involved in fomenting change and promoting their own issues – issues that were increasingly attracting his attention. Instead of rejecting the “modern movement,” as they had previously done, women, according to Comte, could be persuaded to support it if it incorporated a religious element.342 He hoped that if they saw the suitability of worshipping Humanity, they could be won over to his side. Comte sought diversity in terms of not only gender but also occupations and religions. Of the three Englishmen, one had to be a banker, the second a philosopher, and the third a proletarian. Among the Irishmen, one had to be a Catholic proletarian, the other a Protestant theorician (intellectual). What is also noteworthy is Comte’s effort to be sensitive to the different provinces that made up the five countries involved. Among the Frenchmen, there would be only two Parisians. The other six had to be from Burgundy, Brittany, Normandy, Alsace, Provence, and the Languedoc. Among the “English,” there had to be three from England proper, two from Scotland, and two from Ireland. Similar diversity was sought among the Italians, Germans, and Spanish. In addition, the makeup of Comte’s committee reflected his increasingly global interests. There would be twelve adjunct members from the populations that had emanated from Western Europe: four from North America, four from South America, two from India, and two from Oceania. Moreover, there would be twelve associates from “backwards” populations. Although Comte did not usually use the word “race,” he stated that there should be two representatives of the black race, specifically from Haiti (a former French colony) and Africa, and four of the “yellow” race, from China, Japan, Malaysia, and Mongolia.343 Yet he did not suggest that blacks and Asians were inferior due to their skin color. Six “white” members also figured among the “backwards” group: one Russian, one Greek, one Turk, one Persian, one Hindu, and one Egyptian.344 He shared Cuvier’s opinion, one shared by many others in the nineteenth century, that 340 341 342 343 344

Thal`es Bernard to Comte, March 1, April 29, 1847, MAC; CG, 4:249, note CDXCVII. Voix des femmes, March 19, 1848, quoted in Moses, French Feminism, 128. Syst`eme, 3:619. Already in 1847 he had envisioned the need for members to represent other parts of the globe, but the number was smaller and there were no representatives from Africa. See the plan of 1848 in the MAC. The Turk is missing in CG. Considering that Comte already included representatives from India, the “Hindu” might be a reference to someone from outside those areas, perhaps Afghanistan.

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Egyptians were probably not black. Comte also seemed to support the widespread theory that light-skinned Aryans from Central Asia invaded India and left a racial imprint.345 the june days and comte’s activism Comte was keen on organizing his movement. Hoping to attract support and, perhaps, protection, he sent his Discours sur l’esprit positif and his flyer on the positivist club to Marc Caussidi`ere, the prefect of the police. Two members of the Positivist Committee, Magnin and Emile Pascal, served as intermediaries. They undoubtedly knew Caussidi`ere from the days when this militant revolutionary had participated in conspiracies and secret societies.346 Yet soon after Comte sent the material to Caussidi`ere, workers, furious at the abolition of the National Workshops, took to the streets. Although he told his sister on June 9 that he expected “a storm” in the near future, Comte was taken aback by the “terrible anarchy” and deeply saddened by the death of “our brothers and our sons” who were working to regenerate the country.347 Dismayed by the “spectacle of death” and sympathetic to the workers’ cause, he gave ten francs to the “wounded” and “vanquished” combatants. He stayed inside his home, focusing on the details of his “utopia” in order to forget the “public trouble.” Not knowing what to do, he contemplated his “sad youth” and mourned the loss of de Vaux, to whom he began writing his annual “confession.” To convince himself that he was not being apathetic and that he was engaged in the project of regeneration in his own way, he dwelt on the image of de Vaux as the “ideal” woman and convinced himself that thinking about her was important in itself because it made him more loving.348 He told Alix that considering how revolutionary their epoch was, he had “the pure 345

346

347

348

Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Egypt 1785–1985 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 240–43, 269, 330; Padma Manian, “Harappans and Aryans: Old and New Perspectives on Ancient Indian History,” History Teacher 32 (November 1998): 23. On Caussidi`ere, see Furet, Revolutionary France, 398; Agulhon, 1848, 24. Apparently, Pascal had trouble reaching Caussidi`ere. See Comte to Magnin, May 29, 1848, CG, 4:152. The reason is that Caussidi`ere had had a conflict with Arago and left the Prefecture of Police in May. See Raymond Huard, “Renaissance et mort de la R´epublique,” in La R´evolution de 1848 en France et en Europe, ed. Sylvie Aprile, Raymond Huard, Pierre L´evˆeque, Jean-Yves Mollier (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1998), 26; Daumas, Arago, 266. Comte to Alix Comte, June 10, 1848, “Lettres d’Auguste Comte (suite et fin),” Action franc¸aise, 38 (March 15, 1914): 230; Comte, “Troisi`eme Confession annuelle,” CG, 4:157. Comte, “Troisi`eme Confession annuelle,” June 25, 1848, CG, 4:157, 159, 163. See also Comte, July 10 entry, notebook “Recettes et d´epenses courantes, mai 1838–septembre 1857, “ MAC.

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satisfaction of feeling” himself to be a “conscientious collaborator in the final reorganization” to which he had devoted his whole life since his “first childhood.”349 He tried to be courageous. Sophie Bliaux, with whom he liked to converse, had a knack for clever sayings. During the June Days, she told him, “It seems that philosophers must stand up to swords without carrying them.”350 Comte stood up by launching another policy report. After the June Days, he assigned Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte to a commission that was to come up with a plan for a new government. Unlike the previous revolutions in France, which he viewed as negative, Comte was certain that this new revolution could become “positive” and that he should take measures “to regulate” it.351 In August 1848, the three men, guided by Comte’s suggestions, completed their report entitled Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste par la commission charg´ee d’examiner la nature et le plan du nouveau gouvernement r´evolutionnaire. Comte made the leftist tradition with which they wished to ally the positivists very clear: at the bottom of the title page appeared the words “August, 1848, the sixtieth year of the great revolution.”352 Comte wrote the introduction, whereas Littr´e, who had served as a member of the Municipal Council in Paris from late July to mid-October, composed the body.353 A thousand copies of the report were printed for distribution.354 The report elaborated on the plan that Comte had outlined to the Positivist Society earlier in the spring and included in the Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, a major piece of propaganda that he published ten days before.355 Reflecting Comte’s views, the report insisted on the necessity of setting up a provisional revolutionary government during the chaotic transitional period to the positive era. This transitional 349

350 351 352

353 354

355

Comte to Alix Comte, June 10, 1848, “Lettres d’Auguste Comte (suite et fin),” ed. L´eon de Montesquiou, Action franc¸aise 38 (March 15, 1914): 230. In a previous issue, L´eon de Montesquiou, a member of the Action franc¸aise, explained that 100 letters from Comte to his sister “recently fell” into his hands. L´eon de Montesquiou, “Lettres d’Auguste Comte,” Action franc¸aise, 32 (November 15, 1913): 333. These letters, which are nowhere to be found today, are the basis of many of the ones in the CG. This part of the letter was omitted by the editors of the CG. Bliaux, cited in James Winstanley to Mrs. Congreve, November 19, 1857, Positivist Papers, Vol. XV, Add. Mss. 45241, fol. 99, British Library. Comte to Tholouze, September 17, 1849, CG, 5:79. Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte, Rapport a` la Soci´et´e positiviste par la commission charg´ee d’examiner la nature et le plan du nouveau gouvernement r´evolutionnaire, August 9, 1848, CG, 284–304; see also the title page of the brochure, which is in the MAC. Littr´e to Comte, July 25, 1848, MAC. See also Littr´e to Comte, August 13, 1848, MAC. It was published with a slightly different title, Rapport sur le nouveau Gouvernement R´evolutionnaire qui convient maintenant a` la R´epublique Franc¸aise. See Auguste Comte, “Publications de la Soci´et´e Positiviste,” manuscript, MAC. The brochures were printed by E. Thunot and sold by the publishing house L. Mathias. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 405–7.

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era would last for at least one generation.356 In words reminiscent of Robespierre’s famous defense of the Terror, the commission argued that “for a revolutionary period, what is needed is a government knowingly revolutionary.”357 The new government thus had to be founded on the model of the Convention, which had full control over all political measures. After all, according to Comte, the first, provisional government of the Convention had been founded by Danton out of “necessity.”358 However, to allay the fears of the bourgeoisie, who would not appreciate these references to the Convention, the report also stressed the importance of maintaining material order, without which modern civilization could not exist.359 Elaborating on Comte’s position in the Discours, the commissioners wrote, “In France, there are two great interests, two great social forces, the center and the circumference, Paris and the departments. This indicates to us first that there must be two powers answering to these two interests, to these two forces.” Paris had to be the seat of the central power, which had to have both executive and legislative authority. The local power, that of the provinces, would be represented by the Chamber of Deputies. It was not akin to the English House of Commons, for Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte, undoubtedly directed by Comte, dismissed the parliamentary form of government, accusing it of maintaining the privileged position of the upper class. The Chamber of Deputies could be dismissed by the central government and would have only the right to vote the budget, that is, to approve of government taxes, revenues, and expenses; this limitation would deter its members from engaging in superficial, theatrical performances to gain a reputation and thus more power. The positivist commission did not believe that this system would give rise to abuses. Proclaiming its allegiance to a “democratic society,” it put its faith in public opinion, which would allegedly express its approval or disapproval of political measures before they were made into laws. Thus the central power would have to submit its measures to clubs, popular meetings, the press, and thinkers for discussion.360 Clubs should meet regularly, for they were best suited to encourage debate among 356 357 358 359 360

Pierre Laffitte, ed., “Bibliographie positiviste: Second document pour servir a` l’histoire des vues politiques d’Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d ser., 1 ( January 1890): 70. Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte, Rapport, 288. Comte alleged that Robespierre later altered the government to establish his religion of the Supreme Being. Comte to Tholouze, August 9, 1851, CG, 6:135. See also Littr´e to Comte, August 19, 1848, MAC. Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte, Rapport, 292–4. See also Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme, 405–6. Audiffrent later wrote a short essay explaining Comte’s position on the need for a central dictatorship located in Paris. This government had to be unhampered by a parliament, which represented the power of the provinces. Docteur Audiffrent, Une Conversation avec Auguste Comte (Lyon: A. Storck, 1908), 5, 12, 13. Lonchampt was also defensive; he insisted that Comte wanted a central dictatorship that combined the

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members of the lower classes. Although clubs and universal suffrage complemented each other, in the commissioners’ opinion, workers preferred to express themselves directly in the former rather than through the ballot box, which meant that someone else was acting for them. Magnin in particular was suspicious of universal suffrage after witnessing the June Days.361 Sharing that suspicion, Comte later promoted clubs as a replacement for the Chamber of Deputies.362 The report also explained how the central and local powers would be constituted. To avoid an absolutist regime, the central power in Paris would be divided among three functionaries, or “governors,” each of whom would be in charge of one of the following areas: foreign affairs, domestic affairs, and finances.363 These functionaries would be three workers because, again following Comte’s line of thinking, the commissioners maintained that the proletariat lacked a metaphysical education, the source of many prejudices, and that it would not seek to dominate the area of expertise of the philosophers, that is, intellectual and moral life.364 As the most numerous class, the workers also displayed the most general, disinterested views. In addition, the proletarians were the most enthusiastic supporters of revolution, whose goals they could best ensure because they understood the need for social regeneration. In light of the incompetent behavior of the bourgeoisie in the “catastrophe” of June, it was an opportune moment for the proletariat to help launch the positive era. The commissioners wrote, “Today, thanks to revolutionary progress, the most numerous and poorest class can ascend to power.”365 In effect, they advocated a dictatorship of the proletariat. By having workers close the revolutionary era, the state could henceforth avoid dangerous conflicts, which they often caused in the past because their interests were neglected. The central power, composed of these three proletarians, would be nominated by Paris, which had a fine “spirit of generality, wise impartiality, [and] energetic resolution,” especially because it drew its inhabitants from all over France.366 Parisian men would be divided according to their departments of origin. Members of the same department would meet in an electoral college and vote for an elector. The eighty-five electors would name the three governors.367 The terms of the governors would not be set. Instead, a petition filled with 361 362 363 364 365 367

legislative and executive powers because it was in the “historical tradition of France.” Lonchampt, Pr´ecis, 87. Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte, Rapport, 300. See also Larizza, Bandiera verde, 135. Comte to Tholouze, August 9, 1851, CG, 6:136. Each of these men would earn two hundred francs a day. Comte to Armand Barb`es, September 12, 1852, CG, 6:362. On this point, see Rapport a` la Soci´et´e Positiviste, CG, 5:276. Littr´e, Magnin, and Laffitte, Rapport, 295–6. 366 Ibid., 294. As a student at the Ecole Polytechnique, Comte had studied the United States government and may have modeled his plan on the American electoral system. In the fall

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complaints, signed by two hundred Parisians, and displayed for three months would suffice to oust a governor. New elections would then take place.368 Whereas the central power would be in the hands of the poor, the local power would be dominated by the rich.369 The Chamber of Deputies would consist of approximately 250 well-off men because their positions would be unpaid and they would have to have knowledge of financial affairs to oversee the budget. Industrialists were good candidates for these positions.370 There would be universal male suffrage. Men in each department would vote for three deputies, who would have a three-year term. They would meet for three months every year.371 The commissioners recommended that the new government take up three measures. The first was to create public works projects to alleviate unemployment. These could be paid for by the second and third measures, which would simplify the government and eliminate unnecessary expenses. The second measure was to reduce the army. Comte regarded armies as reactionary, unnecessarily expensive, and supportive of nationalist, militaristic adventures. He often expressed the desire to replace them completely by a police force of 80,000 volunteers.372 The third measure was to suppress the budget of the religious orders and the University (except the primary schools and special schools). Comte later added that the Church as a whole and the academies should not receive government aid.373 The goal of this elimination of the “theoretic budget” was to promote more freedom of discussion, giving a chance for opinions and habits to be shaped along positive principles. In any case, the state should have nothing to do with intellectual and spiritual matters. Comte later summed up his notion of the future positivist government in a letter to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia: Its fundamental program will always be to maintain energetically material order, to promote industrial growth, and to respect scrupulously the intellectual movement. Such a government will prepare

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of 1849, Comte modified this plan, replacing the departments by intendancies. The eighty-five electors would be replaced by sixteen intendants “to assure the responsibility of choice.” See Comte to Laffitte, October 18, 1849, CG, 5:99. Comte’s proposal caused some controversy in the Positivist Society. Comte to Laffitte, October 18, 1849, CG, 5:99. Comte to Laffitte, September 4, 1849, CG, 5:69. Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme,406. See Comte to Armand Barb`es, September 12, 1852, CG, 6:362. Laffitte to Comte, August 16, 1849, in “49 Lettres de Pierre Laffitte a` Auguste Comte,” RO, 2d ser., 36 (March 1907): 249; Comte to Laffitte, September 12, 1849, CG, 5:74; Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:467. Comte was very proud of his proposal to eliminate the army, which dated from the last volume of the Cours in 1842. Comte to Tsar Nicholas, December 20, 1852, CG, 6:467. Comte maintained that running the government would be less expensive without an army, clergy, and academies.

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for the normal ascendance of public opinion by submitting all its projects . . . to free universal consultation . . . to gather all worthy suggestions, even from outside.374

Comte was pleased by this plan, which he imagined would mitigate the competition between Paris and the departments as well as the class struggle. Yet there were problems. For example, why would not the clubs become as theatrical in nature as the present Chamber of Deputies? Could not the Chamber of Deputies, composed of wealthy men, influence the decisions of the three workers, especially by not voting for taxes necessary for the public works projects? Was not Comte naive in assuming that the three workers in charge of the government would be free from pressure from interest groups? Would not these individuals, supposedly unsullied by the poor educational system of his day, become subordinated to the spiritual power, whom they would tend to venerate as having more knowledge and thus higher authority?375 Did he not betray his own fear of the lower classes because he did not want proletarians to be elected mayors or deputies, all of whom, he believed, should come from the bourgeoisie.376 Why would middle-class men participate in the government if they were to receive no money or power? He stated at one point that the temporal power would become more decentralized. Why and how would this process occur? There were many unanswered questions and many potential problems. In the Disco