Commodus was not only the strongest man of his time, but he was eminently handsome and beautiful.—J. T.
COMNENA. See Anna Comnena.
COMNENUS. See the respective names of this family.
COMPTON, Henry, a distinguished prelate, was the youngest son of the second earl of Northampton, and was born at Compton in 1632. On the completion of his studies at Queen's college, Oxford, he spent some time in foreign travel, and, returning to England at the restoration of Charles II., became cornet in a regiment of horse. The military profession, however, being not to his taste, he soon quitted it, and, after studying at Cambridge for a season, was created master of arts. He then obtained a grant of the next vacant canonry in Christ Church, Oxford, with the rectory of Cottenham. In 1667 he became master of St. Crosse's hospital, near Winchester. In 1674 he was appointed to the bishopric of Oxford, and about a year after he was translated to the see of London, made dean of the chapel royal, and sworn one of the privy council. The education of the princesses Mary and Anne was committed to him; both were confirmed by him in January, 1676, and both were also married by him. Compton laboured hard at this time to reconcile dissenters to the established church, held several conferences with this view, and corresponded on the subject with some eminent foreign divines.—(Stillingfleet's Unreasonableness of Separation, Appendix.) The bishop's love of protestantism was unflinching; and for his resistance to the popish measures of the court during the conclusion of the reign of Charles II., and especially under that of his bigoted successor, and for his refusal to silence Dr. Sharp, he was removed from the council, dismissed from the deanery, insulted and brow-beaten by the insolent Jeffreys, and ultimately suspended by the high commission from his episcopal functions during his majesty's pleasure. His former pupil, Mary, now princess of Orange, interceded in his behalf, but to no purpose. When the court became alarmed as to the intentions of the prince of Orange, Compton was restored. He conveyed the Princess Anne from London to Nottingham, but on the arrival of the prince he joined heartily in welcome to him, and publicly thanked him at the head of his clergy. His place in the privy council and the deanery of the chapel royal were given back to him, and, on the refusal of Archbishop Sancroft to take the oath of allegiance, he crowned William and Mary, April 11th, 1689. In the convocation of that year he made some efforts again towards union with dissenters. He spoke strongly in behalf of Nottingham's measure; but his scheme of comprehension seems to have satisfied neither those in the church nor those out of it. Soon after he was named by the king one of the commissioners of trade and plantations, and the bishop of London, as such, has or had episcopal superintendence of colonial churches without bishops of their own. In 1690-91 he attended William to the Hague, and about the same period opposed the foolish prosecution of Sacheverell. Towards the end of this reign he sided with the high church party, and his influence waned. At the accession of Queen Anne he was still without his former power, but about the conclusion of her reign his principles rose again into popularity. In 1712 he was named on the first commission to negotiate the union with Scotland, but was left out of the second in 1706. He died at Fulham, July 7, 1713, at the ripe age of eighty-one. Compton published six letters—"Episcopalia," a treatise on the holy communion, and a translation from the Italian of the life of Donna Olympia Maldachini. His character has been variously estimated. Burnet speaks of him as "a weak man and wilful," but others have eulogized him. He was evidently not a man of enlarged mind, and he was not always ingenuous in his dealings with King James; but he was generous, kind to the poor, hospitable to his clergy, and liberal in bounty to many protestant refugees. Compton's remains were deposited in the churchyard of Fulham, and not, as was usual for persons of his dignity, in the church; for he was in the habit of saying, "The church is for the living, the churchyard for the dead."—J. E.
COMPTON, Spencer, second earl of Northampton, was born in 1601, and distinguished himself by his courage and zeal in the royal cause during the great civil war. When the king erected his standard at Nottingham in 1642, the earl of Northampton was one of the first who joined the royal forces, at the head of a troop of horse and a regiment of foot raised at his own expense, and having four of his sons officers under him. He rendered important services to the king's cause in the counties of Warwick, Stafford, and Northampton. This gallant nobleman fell at the battle of Hopton Heath, near Stafford, 19th March, 1643.—James, the eldest son and successor of the earl, and Charles, the second son, charged by their father's side at Hopton Heath. Sir Charles acquired great celebrity by his surprisal of Beeston castle in Cheshire, which he effected with only six followers.—Sir William Compton, the third son of the earl, also a gallant and accomplished cavalier, born in 1624, at the commencement of the civil war contributed greatly to the capture of Banbury, of which he was appointed governor. In 1648 Sir William was appointed major-general of the royal forces in Colchester, and conducted the defence of that place in a manner which drew down the eulogium of Cromwell. After the restoration he was appointed a member of the privy council, and master-general of the ordnance.—J. T.
COMTE, Aguste, a famous French philosopher, was born at Montpellier, June 12th 1798. He entered the polytechnic school at Paris, and having pursued physical and mathematical studies with especial devotion, was appointed public examiner at that institution. For a short time he was connected with the disciples of St. Simon, but soon detached himself from an influence which he subsequently pronounced disastrous, but which his old comrades declared to have sowed the seed of many of his future speculations. Gifted with great powers of generalization, and discontented with the disorganized character of political and social science, Comte sought to introduce the same rigid system into sociology which he found existing in mathematics, and to subjugate the phenomena of life to formal, definite, and determinable laws. The first great law laid down by Comte as the fundamental condition of human progress is, that every branch of science passes through three stages—the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. In the theological stage, man explains phenomena by the action of beings endowed with faculties kindred to his own, although working in a supernatural sphere. In the metaphysical stage man explains phenomena by the action of abstract forces inherent in all beings, and possessing a certain real existence. In the positive stage, man abandons the search after any final cause and absolute essence, and entirely confines himself to the study of the constant successions, existences, and resemblances of outward phenomena. For this law Comte claims an historical as well as a theoretical truth. He next proceeds to arrange a hierarchy of the sciences. He proposed to himself the discovery of the one natural order among all possible systems, and reached the conclusion that the fundamental sciences must be arranged according to the generality of their phenomena. We must begin with the most general or simple, going on successively to the more particular or complex. Inorganic bodies being less complex than organic, must determine the sciences to be placed first; and their subdivisions must be regulated by the fact that astronomy is more general than physics, and physics than chemistry. An analogous division arises in the science of organized bodies, physiology being less complex than sociology. Comte's famous hierarchy of the sciences therefore stands as follows:—I. Inorganic—1. Astronomy; 2. Physics; 3. Chemistry. II. Organic—1. Physiology; 2. Sociology. And he maintains that this order of decreasing generality has also been the order of historical development. Facts, however, will hardly support this ingenious generalization. The objections are well summed up in an essay on the genesis of science, by Herbert Spencer.
The whole of Comte's early and middle life was occupied in the development of the views we have indicated. And although his theories can in no respect be regarded as established discoveries, yet in their elucidation, amid many strange vagaries, he manifested unmistakeable genius. In spite of all its short comings, in the "Cours de Philosophie Positive" the progress of scientific discovery is described with a master-hand; the analogies and dependencies existing among facts apparently diverse, are detected with consummate skill. The relations of historical events to general principles of human progress are often dwelt upon with a singular suggestiveness. Comte discovered what he believed the great law of human progress in 1822, in which year he published the "Système de Politique Positive." The publication of his great work, the "Cours de Philosophie Positive," extended over twelve years, from 1830 to 1842. The personal career of this writer was interrupted by a temporary attack of mental disease in 1826; by a marriage which does not appear to have been happy; and by his dismissal from the poly-
