From his earliest manhood Comte had been powerfully im pressed by the necessityof elevating the condition of women. (See remarkable passage in his letters to M. Valat, pp. 84-7.) His friendship with Madame de Vaux had deepened the impression, and in the reconstructed society women are to play a highly important part. They are to be care fully excluded from public action, but they are to do many more important things than things political. To fit them for their functions, they are to be raised above material cares, and they are to be thoroughly educated. The family, which is so important an element of the Comtist scheme of things, exists to carry the influence of woman over man to the highest point of cultivation. Through affection she purifies the activity of man. " Superior in power of affection, more able to keep both the intellectual and the active powers in continual subordination to feeling, women are formed as the natural intermediaries between Humanity and man. The Great Being confides specially to them its moral Providence, maintaining through them the direct and constant cultivation of universal affection, in the midst of all the distractions of thought or action, which are for ever withdrawing men from its influ ence Beside the uniform influence of every woman on every man, to attach him to Humanity, such is the importance and the difficulty of this ministry that each of us should be placed under the special guidance of one of these angels, to answer for him, as it were, to the Great Being. This moral guardianship may assume three types, the mother, the wife, and the daughter ; each having several modifications, as shown in the concluding volume. Together they form the three simple modes of solidarity, or unity with contemporaries, obedience, union, and protection, as well as the three degrees of continuity between ages, by uniting us with the past, the present, and the future. In accordance with my theory of the brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic instincts, veneration, attachment, and benevolence."
How the positive method of observation and verifica tion of real facts has landed us in this, and much else of the same kind, is extremely hard to guess. Seriously to ex amine an encyclopaedic system, that touches life, society, and knowledge at every point, is evidently beyond the compass of such an article as this. There is in every chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would need a long chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss. There is at least one biological speculation of astounding audacity, that could be examined in nothing less than a treatise. Perhaps we have said enough to show that after performing a great and real service to thought, Comte almost sacrificed his claims to gratitude by the inventiou of a system that, as such, and independently of detached suggestions, is markedly retrograde. But the world has strong self-protecting qualities. It will take what is available in Comte, while forgetting that in his work which is as irrational in one way as Hegel is in another
The English reader is specially well placed for satisfying such curiosity as he may have about Comte s philosophy. MissMartmeau condensed the six volumes of the Philosophie Positive into two volumes of excellent English (1853) ; Comte himself gave them a place in the Positivist Library. The Catechism was translated by Dr Con- greve in 1858. The Politique Positive has been reproduced in Knglish (Longmans, 1875-7) by the conscientious labour of Comte s London followers. This translation is accompanied by a careful running analysis and explanatory summary of contents, which make the work more readily intelligible than the original. For criticisms, the reader may be referred to Mr Mill s Auguste Comte and Posi tivism; Dr Bridges s reply to Mr Mill, The Unity of Comte s Life and Doctrines (1866) ; Mr Herbert Spencer s essay on the Genesis of Science, and pamphlet on The Classification of the Sciences; Pro fessor Huxley s "Scientific Aspects of Positivism," in his Lay Ser- i.wns; Dr Congreve s Essays Political, Social, and Religious (1874); Mr Fiske s Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874); Mr Lewes s History of Philosophy, vol. ii.
COMUS (from KW/XOS, revel, or a company of revellers) was, in the later mythology of the Greeks, the god of festive mirth. In classic mythology the personification does not exist ; but Comus appears in the Ei/cdvcs, or Descriptions of Pictures, of Philostratus, a writer of the 3d century A.D., as a winged youth, slumbering in a standing attitude, his legs crossed, his countenance flushed with wine, his head which is sunk upon his breast crowned with dewy flowers, his left hand feebly grasping a hunting spear, his right an inverted torch. Ben Jonson introduces Comus, iu his masque entitled Pleasure reconciled to Virtue (1619), as the portly jovial patron of good cheer, "First father of sauce and deviser of jelly." In the Comus, sive Phagesiposia Cimmeria : Somnium (1608, and at Oxford, 1634), a moral allegory by a Dutch author, Ilendrik van der Putten, or Erycius Puteanus, the conception is more nearly akin to Milton s, and Comus is a being whoso enticements are more disguised and delicate than those of Jonson s deity. But Milton s Comus is a creation of hia own. His story is one
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" Which never yet was heard in tale or song From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.
Born from the loves of Bacchus and Circe, he is " much like his father, but his mother more" a sorcerer, like her, who gives to travellers a magic draught that changes their human face into the " brutal form of some wild beast," and, hiding from them their own foul disfigurement, makes them forget all the pure ties of life, " to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty,"
CONCA, Sebastiano (1676-1764), a painter of the Florentine school, was born at Gaeta, and studied at Naples under Francesco Solimena. In 1706, along with his brother Giovanni, who acted as his assistant, he settled at Rome, where for several years he worked in chalk only, to improve his drawing. He was patronized by the Cardinal Ottoboni, who introduced him to Clement XI. ; and a Jeremiah painted in the church of St John Lateran, was rewarded by the Pope with knighthood and by the cardinal with a diamond cross. His fame grew quickly, and by-and-by he received the patronage of most of the crowned heads of Europe. He painted on till near the day of his death, and left behind him an immense number of pictures, mostly of a brilliant and showy kind, which are distributed among the churches of Italy. Of these the Probatica, or Pool of Siloam, in the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, at Siena, is considered the finest.
situated within the limits of the Presidency of Bombay, and extending from the Portuguese settlement of Goa on the S. to the territory of Daman, belonging to the same nation, on the N. On the E. it is bounded by the Ghats, and on the "VV. by the Indian Ocean. This tract comprises the two British districts of Tannah and Ratnagiri, and may be estimated at 300 miles in length, with an average breadth of about 40. From the mountains on its eastern frontier, which in one place attain a height of 4700 feet, the surface, marked by a succession of irregular hilly spurs from the Ghats, slopes to the westward, where the mean elevation of the coast is not more than 100 feet above the level of the sea. Several mountain streams, but none of any magnitude, traverse the country in the same direction. One of the most striking characteristics of the climate is the violence of the monsoon rains the mean annual fall at Mahableshwar amounting to 239 inches. It is believed that the abundant moisture borne along from the Indian Ocean by this aerial current, becomes arrested and condensed by the mountain barrier of the GhAts, and in this manner accounts for the excessive rains which deluge the Concan.
The products of this country are the same as those of