The fourth chapter in Littré’s Life of Comte has for heading the names of Kant and Condorcet. The whole of the former’s remarkable sketch of general history is given and reference is made to the letter in chap. viii, where Comte, in 1824, being twenty-six years old, says to M. d’Eichthal, his former pupil, “I have read and reread with infinite pleasure Kant’s little treatise; it is prodigious for the epoch, and if I had known it six or seven years sooner it would have saved me trouble. I am delighted that you have translated it; it can contribute very efficaciously to preparing minds for positive philosophy. Its general conception or at least its method is still metaphysical, but the details show the positive spirit at every instant. I had always regarded Kant not only as a very strong head, but as the metaphysician that approaches the nearest to positive philosophy. But this reading has greatly fortified and especially given precision to my conviction in that regard. If Condorcet had had knowledge of this writing, which I do not believe, very little merit would remain to him, since he can pretend only to that of the conception, which is almost as firm and, in some respects, even clearer in Kant. As for me, after this reading I can find in myself, up to the present time, no other value than that of having systematised and fixed the conception that had been sketched by Kant unknown to me, which I owe chiefly to a scientific education; and even the most positive and distinct step that I have taken after him, seems to me only the discovery of the law of the passage of human ideas through the three stages, theological, metaphysical, and scientific; a law that appears to me to be the foundation of the work whose execution Kant has counselled. I thank my lack of erudition to-day; for if my work, such as it is now, had been preceded by a study of Kant’s treatise, it would have lost much of its value in my eyes. I conceive now, as you said, that, for the German philosophers that are familiar with this treatise, my work will really have a great effect only with the second part.” This work was a short one reprinted in Saint-Simon’s _Catéchisme des industriels_ and called “A System of Positive Politics.” It had been inserted two years before, under the title of “A Plan of the Work Necessary for the Reorganisation of Society,” in a pamphlet of Saint-Simon’s, without Comte’s name, and it was because the latter insisted, this time, upon an acknowledgment of his authorship that Saint-Simon broke with him. The “second part,” which was to produce the great effect upon the German philosophers, never appeared; or rather, it soon grew to be the _Course of Positive Philosophy_, begun on the 2d of April, 1826, before Humboldt, Blainville, and other celebrated listeners.