Comstock, Grover S., a Baptist missionaiy, was bom at Ulysses, N. T., March 24, 1809. He gradua- ted at Hamilton College in 1827, studied law after- wards, and was admitted to ^he bar in 1880. Under the ministry of the Rev. C. G.'Finney he was convert- ed, and then studied theology at the Madison Univen- ity. Deciding to devote his life to missions, be en- tered the service of the Baptist Foreign Misaioiiary Board, and sailed from Boston for Bnrmah on July % 1884. He remained some time at Amherst and Maul- main studying the language, and then choee Arracan for his field of labor. In 1887 he organized a native church at Kyouk Phyou ; and he remained, in spite of a deadly climate, to which his wife and two cbildreB fell victims in 1848, unreiritting in labor until the iO- neas which ended in his death, April 25, 1844. — Jamt- ioan Mitsionary Memorial^ p. 156.
Comte, AuousTE, founder of the so-called P^tiv- ism, was bom at Montpellier Jan. 12, 1798, and died at Paris Sept 5, 1857. He was the propounder of an elaborate system of philosophy, to which he gave the name of Positive, to denote its scientific and practical character, and to distinguish it from all schemes of metaphysical speculation.
He sprang from a family eminently Roman CTatbo- lic in religion and Royalist in politics, and these influ- ences afiflscted the development of his theories, not- withstanding the fever of innovation which always possessed him. He was educated in Paris at the Polytechnic school, in which he became a subordinate instractor in 1882. His first dreams of philosophic reform are ascribed by him to his fourteenth year, per- haps in rivalry of the precocity attributed to Bacon. In 1816 he conten plated emigration to the United States, and the transplanting of his nascent phUoso]^ ical career to America. In August, 1817, he becaine acquainted with the notorious St. Simon — half seer.
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half chirlwtMi— and was so strongly impressed with his yisioiiAnr raptures as to be considered his roost hopeftil disciple, and the saccessor upon whom that strange sage desired liis mantle to fidl, though recog- nising Comte*s fatal want of religions susoeptibilttjr. This connection was always acknowledged by Gomte, though mentioned in later years with increasing bit- temees and disgust He disclaimed all obligations to St. Simon, and Aimed and fretted whenever the traces of St. Simonism were recognised in his own philos- ophy. In April, 1826, he opened a course of gratu- itous prelections on the new scheme, which had been reduced to a somewhat determinate form by several easays i^eviously published. The course was inter- rupted by brain fiver, terminating in insanity. In consequence of this attack, which he designates tme eriae cMbraUf he was for some time confined in a lu- natic asylum.
In 1829 he commenced the immense structure of his Positive Philosophy. It was' completed in six heavy volumes, containing nearly 6000 pages. The first volume appeared in 1890, its 760 pages having been composed in the space of three months. M. Ck>mte rarely revised, and never reoopied his manuscript. As it came from his brain it passed to the press, and from the press to the public The Bevolution of July delayed liie prosecution of his labors fbr five years, but with the return of more tranquil times he resumed them, and achieved the sixth and last volume in 1842. This is the work on which .M. Comte*s reputation as a philosopher almost exclusively rests. It is the only one of his works accepted l^ the majority of his disciples, or regarded by those who follow his guidance without attaching themselves to his banner. It contains the body and substance of Positivism, and was justly rebaptised S9tAm6 de PhiloaopkU PoiUhe, In hb later philosophical development Comte endeav- ored to infttte the vital breath of a moral and religious spirit into the cadaverous Pmrhonism of his earlier views. But this attempt, wnich was flagrantly un- sueoeasfri], oiTended alike his sect and his distant ad- mirers, who hailed and honored his labors rather fbr their sjrstematlc infidelity than for their recognised truth.
Ob the oompletion of liis scheme of philosophy Gomte proceeded to apply its principles to the rectifi- cation oif society. It was nine years, however, before the first volume of his 8y$tim6 dt PotitiqtK PoaUwe appeared. They wero years of annoyance, anguish, in^ortune, and strange adventure. He had support- ed hfanself and his famOy by the scanty fhiits o^ his vocation as a puUio and a private teacher of mathe- matics. To tlds vocation we are indebted for his TVsotiss of Ama^ftical GwmOry, published in 1848. He relieved tlie dull routine of duty by lectures to the Parisian community on topics connected with sdence, or with the promulgation of his phflosophy. One of these courses is perpetuated in his PUfosqpAsca/ TVso- Uae oi» Popular Aitronomgf (1846). His heretical opin- ions, and, stUl more, his arrogant and irritable disposi- tion, provoked opposition, and excited ill-will among his colleagues. His position in the Polytedmic School was rendered precarious, and lie was finally deprived of it. At a later period his public lectures were for a sliort time closed by the interfBrence of the govern- ment. This is the long personal persecution of which be complains with habitual acrimony in his later works. He was married, but had been separated fkom his wife. While his heart was wrung and parched by many sorrows, a new fascination consoled him, and opened unsuspected fountains in a dry and tiiirsty soO. In 1846 Gomte became violently attached to an accom- plished lady, Hadame Glotilde de Taux, who was sep- arated from her husband, as he was from his wifo. Thdr association was purely Platonic, and terminated in a year by the death of die siren on April 6, 1846. The Pdtitkfe PoSUet is animated throughout by her in- II.— F F