Part 28

Against the direct command of his parents, he went back to Paris. He had now reached the mature age of eighteen. He resolved to write out truth as it occurred to him, and incidentally he would gain a livelihood by teaching mathematics.

At Paris, the mental audacity of the youth won him recognition; he picked up a precarious living, and was a frequenter at scientific lectures and discussions, and in gatherings where great themes were up for debate, he was always present.

Benjamin Franklin was his ideal. In his notebook he wrote this: "Franklin at twenty-five resolved he would become great and wise. I now vow the same at twenty." He had five years the start!

Franklin, calm, healthy, judicial, wise--the greatest man America has produced--worked his philosophy up into life. He did not think much beyond his ability to perform. To him, to think was to do. And he did things that to many men were miracles.

Comte once said, "I would have followed the venerable Benjamin Franklin through the street, and kissed the hem of the homespun overcoat, made by Deborah." These men were very unlike. One was big, gentle, calm and kind; the other was small, dyspeptic, excitable and full of challenge. Yet the little man had times of insight and abstraction, when he tracked reasons further than the big, practical man could have followed them.

Franklin's habit of life--the semi-ascetic quality of getting your gratification by doing without things--especially pleased Comte. He lived in a garret on two meals a day, and was happy in the thought that he could endure and yet think and study. The old monastic impulse was upon him, minus the religious features--or stay! why may not science become a religion? And surely science can become dogmatic, and even tyrannically build a hierarchy on a hypothesis no less than theology.

A friend, pitying young Comte's hard lot, not knowing its sweet recompense, got him a position as tutor in the household of a nobleman; like unto the kind man who caught the sea-gulls roosting on an iceberg, and in pity, transferred them to the warm delights of a compost-pile in his barnyard.

Comte held the place for three weeks and then resigned. He went back to the garret and sweet liberty--having had his taste of luxury, but miserable in it all--wondering how a gavotte or a minuet could make a man forget that he was living in a city where thirty thousand human beings were constantly only one meal beyond the sniff of starvation.

At this time Comte came into close relationship with a man who was to have a very great influence in his life--this was Count Henri of Saint-Simon, usually spoken of as Saint-Simon.

Saint-Simon was rich, gently proud, and fondly patronizing. He was a sort of scientific Maecenas--and be it known that Maecenas was a poet and philosopher of worth, and one Horace was his pupil.

Saint-Simon was an excellent and learned man who wrote, lectured and taught on philosophic themes. He had a garden-school, modeled in degree after that of Plato. Saint-Simon became much interested in young Comte, invited him to his classes, supplied him books, clothing, and tickets to the opera. Part of the time Comte lived under Saint-Simon's roof, and did translating and copying in partial payment for his meal-ticket. The teacher and the pupil had a fine affection for each other. What Comte needed, he took from Saint-Simon as if it were his own.

In writing to friends at this time, Comte praises Saint-Simon as the greatest man who ever lived--"a model of patience, generosity, learning and love--my spiritual father!" There was fifty years' difference in their ages, but they studied, read and rambled the realm of books together, with mutual pleasure and profit.

The central idea of the "Positive Philosophy" is that of the three stages through which man passes in his evolution. This was gotten from Saint-Simon, and together they worked out much of the thought that Comte afterward carried further and incorporated in his book.

But about this time, Saint-Simon, in one of his lectures, afterward printed, made use of some of the thoughts that Comte had expressed, as if they were his own--and possibly they were. There is no copyright on an idea, no caveat can be filed on feeling, and at the last there is no such thing as originality, except as a matter of form.

Young Comte now proved his humanity by accusing his teacher of stealing his radium. A quarrel followed, in which Comte was so violent that Saint-Simon had to put the youth out of his house.

The wrangles of Grub Street would fill volumes: both sides are always right, or wrong--it matters little, and is simply a point of view. But the rancor of it all, if seen from heaven, must serve finely to dispel the monotony of the place--a panacea for paradisiacal ennui.

From lavish praise, Comte swung over to words of bitterness and accusation. Having sat at the man's table and partaken of his hospitality for several years, he was now guilty of the unpardonable offense of ridiculing and berating him.

He speaks of the Saint as a "depraved quack," and says that the time he spent with him was worse than wasted. If Saint-Simon was the rogue and pretender that Comte avers, it is no certificate of Comte's insight that it took him four years to find it out.

* * * * *

In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five Comte married. The ceremony was performed civilly, on a sudden impulse of what Schopenhauer would call "the genius of the genus." The lady was young, agreeable; and having no opinions of her own, was quite willing to accept his. Comte congratulated himself that here was virgin soil, and he laid the flattering unction to his soul that he could mold the lady's mind to match his own. She would be his helpmeet. Comte had not read Ouida, who once wrote that when God said, "I will make a helpmeet for him," He was speaking ironically.

Comte had associated but very little with women--he had theories about them. Small men, with midget minds, know femininity much better than do the great ones. Traveling salesmen, with checkered vests, gauge women as Herbert Spencer never could.

Comte's wife was pretty and she was astute--as most pretty women are. John Fiske, in his lecture on "Communal Life," says that astute persons add nothing of value to the community in which they live--their mission being to be the admired glass of fashion for the non-cogitabund. The value of astuteness is that it protects us from the astute.

Samuel Johnson and his wife had their first quarrel on the way from the church, and Auguste Comte and his wife tiffed going down the steps from the notary's. Comte had no use for ecclesiastical forms, and the lady agreed with him until after the notary had earned his fee. Then she suddenly had qualms, like those peculiar ladies told of by Robert Louis Stevenson, who turn the Madonna's face to the wall.

The couple went to Montpelier on their wedding-tour, to visit Comte's parents. The new wife agreed with the old folks on but one point--the marriage should be solemnized by a priest. Having won them on this point, they stood a solid phalanx against the husband; but the lady took exceptions to Montpelier on all other grounds--she hated it thoroughly and said so.

Instead of molding her to his liking, Comte was being kneaded into animal crackers for her amusement.

Then we find him writing to a friend, confessing that his hopes were ashes; but in his misery he grows philosophical and says, "It is all good, for now I am driven back to my work, and from now on my life is dedicated to science."

No doubt the lady was as much disappointed in the venture as was the husband, but he, being literary, eased his grief by working it up into art, while her side of the story lies buried deep in silence glum.

In choosing the names of philosophers for this series, no thought was given in the selection beyond the achievements of the men. But it now comes to me with a slight surprise that seven out of the twelve were unmarried, and probably it would have been as well--certainly for the wives--if the other five had remained bachelors, too. Xantippe would have been the gainer, even if Socrates did miss his discipline.