It is, therefore, an entirely new work. Comte can imagine without difficulty that it might have been reserved for another than himself. His personal mission might have been limited to the foundation of the philosophy which puts an end to the “_mental_ anarchy.” The ethics and the religion which were to be established upon this philosophy, to put an end to _moral and political_ anarchy, would, in this case, have been the work of one of his successors. Stubborn labour and good fortune allowed Comte to undertake this work himself. But even in 1845, he says how “under the holy influence of Mdme. de Vaux,” he had very clearly seen his two careers as distinct and as one, these two careers of which the second was to transform philosophy into religion, as the first had changed science into philosophy. The object of the present work is to study Comte’s philosophy properly so called, leaving aside the transformation of this philosophy into religion. The choice which we thus make is not an arbitrary one, since, in order to justify it, we have the distinction formally established by Comte himself, when he admits that his philosophy and his religion might have been the work of two different persons. It will perhaps be asked in what our position differs from that of Littré, and of the “incomplete positivists.” By the difference, we shall answer, which separates the historical from the dogmatic point of view. It is from the latter point of view that Littré and his friends reject the “systematisation of the feelings,” the subjective method and the religion of Humanity. It is as positivists that they connect themselves with the first half of the doctrine, and that they exclude the second half. But we are here working from the historical point of view, and the historian, while using his right to define the limits of his work has nothing to exclude from the doctrine which he sets forth. As a matter of fact far from claiming with Littré that the second part of Comte’s work weakens and contradicts the first, we have recognised that they both form a whole of which he had drawn out the plan in his early writings, and that he was not wrong in taking as an epigraph for his _Politique positive_ the fine words of the poet-philosopher: _What is a great life? A thought of youth fulfilled in riper age._ But then, why only study the first of the two careers, why not respect the integrity of that whole which, according to us, Littré ought not to have disregarded?--We do respect it, for we do not arbitrarily exclude from the doctrine any of the parts which Comte included in it. If we make the philosophy proper the sole object of this study, in it we shall ever have before our minds the idea of the greater whole in which Comte placed it. On this condition alone, our study will be accurate. But once this condition is fulfilled we do not consider that we exceed our right, in concentrating our effort upon the philosophy.