The translation itself is a literary masterpiece. It renders an extremely abstract and complex French type of philosophical dogmatism into easy and simple English, whilst at the same time preserving and even elucidating the somewhat cryptic allusions and _nuances_ of the original. The thought in the French is full, pregnant, and suggestive, at once subtle and abstract, and rich with words of a new coinage--such as _altruism_, _sociology_, _dynamics_ (i.e., history), and old words used in a special sense. This difficulty Dr. Bridges surmounts by breaking up the involved sentences, supplying names and facts indirectly referred to, and by transferring technical language into popular English. The success of the translation has been proved by the thousands of copies sold in the original 12mo edition of 1865, in the 8vo edition of 1875, and in the stereotyped reprint of 1881. A pathetic interest attaches to the history of the translation. In 1860 Dr. Bridges, just settled as a physician in Melbourne, lost his young wife by fever. He at once returned to England, bringing the remains of his wife for interment in the family graveyard in Suffolk. In those days of sailing vessels the voyage home round Cape Horn occupied at least three months. Dr. Bridges resolved to conquer his sorrow, shut himself in his cabin during the voyage home and completed the translation (in 430 pages of print) within the time at sea:-- The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. Auguste Comte always spoke of the _Positive Polity_ as ‘his principal work’. The _Discours sur l’Ensemble_, or _General View of Positivism_, formed the introduction to the four volumes. It forms a summary of the entire work, and it is indeed a systematic application of the doctrine to the actual condition of society. As the _Polity_, taken as a whole, professes to embody a set of doctrines for the regulation of thought and life, the present _Introduction_ is designed to show the need of such a body of doctrine, the result that they would produce, and the mode in which they are likely to work. Thus, one who desires to see in one view the social purpose which Positivism proposes to effect would find it in no single volume better than in this treatise.