Mill's sympathy for Comte's misfortunes in any way abated; but the chance of their ever pulling together on social questions was reduced to a very small amount. They still agreed as to the separation of the spiritual and the temporal power, but only as a vague generality. In July, 1844, came the crash at the Polytechnic; by a dexterous manoeuvre, Comte was ousted without being formally dismissed; he lost six thousand francs a year, and was in dire distress. He appealed to Mill, but with the same reservation as before; Mill exerted himself with Grote and Molesworth, who with Raikes Currie agreed to make up the deficiency for the year. Another election came round, and he was not reinstated, and was again dependent on the assistance of his English friends. They made up a portion of his second year's deficiency, but declined to continue the grant. He is vexed and chagrined beyond measure, and administers to Mill a long lecture upon the relations of rich men to philosophers; but his complaint is most dignified in its tone. This puts Mill into a very trying position; he has to justify the conduct of Grote and Molesworth, who might with so little inconvenience to themselves have tided him over another year. The delicate part of the situation was that Grote, who began admiring Comte, as Mill did, although never to the same degree, was yet strongly adverse to his sociological theories, especially as regarded their tendency to introduce a new despotism over the individual. Indeed, his admiration of Comte scarcely extended at all to the sociological volumes. He saw in them frequent mistakes and perversions of historical facts, and did not put the same stress as Mill did upon the social analysis—the distinction of statics and dynamics, and historical method; in fact, he had considerable misgivings throughout as to all the grand theories of the French school in the philosophy of history. But the repression of liberty by a new machinery touched his acutest susceptibility; he often recurred in conversation to this part of Comte's system, and would not take any comfort from the suggestion I often made to him that there was little danger of any such system ever being in force. It was the explanation of this divergence that Mill had to convey to Comte; who, on the other hand, attempted in vain to reargue the point by calling to mind how much he and Mill were agreed upon, which, however, did not meet Grote's case. He returned to the theme in successive letters, and urged upon Mill that there was an exaggeration of secondary differences, and so on. What may be said in his favor is that Grote turned round upon him rather too soon. This was in 1846. The same year his Clotilde died. He still unfolded his griefs to Mill, and, as may be supposed, received a tender and sympathizing response. The correspondence here ends.[1]
- ↑ Although Mill was the first and principal medium of making Comte and his doctrines familiar to the public, he was soon followed by George Henry Lewes, who was beginning his literary career, as a writer in reviews, about the year 1841. I met Lewes frequently when I was first in London in 1842. He sat at the feet of Mill, read the
