Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/42

But I do not write this letter merely for the purpose of pointing out these facts. I write it mainly for the purpose of making public the judgment given on the question at issue by the earliest and most distinguished of M. Comte's English adherents, Mr. John Stuart Mill. Before quoting his judgment I must explain how it came to be given, and in doing this must reproduce a letter written by me to him many years ago, which itself contains evidence clearly disproving Mr. Harrison's assertion. Here it is, or rather the first part of it:

"17 Wilmot Street, Derby, July 29, 1858.

"My dear Sir: May I ask your opinion on a point partly of personal interest, partly of more general interest? "In the essays on 'Progress; its Law and Cause,' and on 'Transcendental Physiology,' which I believe you have read, are the rudiments of certain general principles, which, at the time they were first enunciated, I had no intention of developing further. But more recently these general principles, uniting with certain others, whose connection with them I did not before recognize, have evolved into a form far higher than I had ever anticipated; and I now find that the various special ideas which I had designed hereafter to publish on certain divisions of Biology, Psychology, and Sociology, have fallen into their places as parts of the general body of doctrine thus originating. Having intended to continue occupying myself, as hitherto, in writing essays and books embodying these various special ideas, I have become still more anxious to devote my energies to the exposition of these larger views, which include them, and, as I think, reduce all the higher sciences to a rational form."

Has Mr. Harrison any doubt concerning the truth of these statements? If so, he may easily verify them. If he will turn to the second, or constructive, division of "First Principles" (I give the references to the second and subsequent editions, partly because they are most widely distributed), he will find that Chapter XV embodies the argument contained in the first half of the essay on "Progress: its Law and Cause," and incorporates all the illustrative examples along with additional ones; and in Chapter XX he will find the second half of that essay reproduced with all its illustrations, and with further elaborations. Similarly, two fundamental principles set forth in the essay originally published under the title "The Ultimate Laws of Physiology" (but republished in the third volume of my Essays, etc. under the title "Transcendental Physiology"), he will find are severally developed in Chapters XIV and XIX; where, again, the original illustrations will be found joined with numerous others, accompanying a much wider extension of those principles. In these two essays, then, Mr. Harrison will discover the idées-mères of the Synthetic Philosophy; and the task before him is to affiliate these ideas, if he can, upon the ideas contained in the Positive Philosophy.

I now come to the opinion expressed by Mr. Mill. When, in 1864, there appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes an article on "First Principles," by M. Auguste Laugel, in which he described me as being