But, on the other hand, in carefully reading the _Cours_, we find numerous indications of the future structure of the Politique positive. Comte might have been content with a reference to the _Cours_, to answer the objections of his dissenting disciples. He did better. He reprinted at the end of the fourth volume of his _Politique positive_ six pamphlets written in his youth from 1818 to 1826. In them, not only is his philosophy already sketched in its main outlines with sufficient precision; but the idea that philosophy is a preliminary work, a simple prelude and that the essential work, the supreme end, is the positive religion which shall arise upon this philosophy--this idea is the very soul of these pamphlets. The proof is given. Upon the question of the unity of his doctrine Comte wins the case against Littré. IV. In his correspondence with Stuart Mill which takes place between 1841 and 1846, that is to say which embraces the end of his first career and the beginning of the second, Comte has repeatedly explained how the two successive portions of his work are connected together, and in what they are distinct. It may not be useless to quote his own words. “The second half of my philosophical life,” he says, “must differ notably from the first, especially in that feeling must take, if not an obvious, at least a real part in it, one as great as that of the intellect. The great work of systematization which has been reserved for our century, must indeed embrace equally, both feelings and ideas as a whole. Truly it was the ideas which had first to be systematized, under pain of failing to bring about a complete regeneration by falling into a more or less vague mysticism. That is why my fundamental work had to appeal almost exclusively to the intellect. It was to be a work of research, and accessorily of discussion, destined to discover and to constitute the true universal principles, in rising by hierarchical degrees from the simplest scientific questions to the highest social speculations.”[8] But this being done, Comte passed to the systematisation of the feelings, “a necessary sequel to that of the ideas, and an indispensable basis for that of the institutions.”