J H Bridges

The Unity Of Comte’s Life And Doctrine. A Reply To Strictures On Comte’s Later Writings, Addressed To J.S.Mill, Esq.,M.P.

RIDGES,J.H. The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrine. A reply to strictures on Comte's later writings, addressed to J.S.Mill, Esq.,M.P. London, Trübner & Co., 1866

Octavo, quarter cloth and marbled boards, paper label, pp.70.

First edition. The positivist John Henry Bridges (1832-1906) was, alongside Richard Congreve, Frederic Harrison and Edward Beesley, a significant representative of Comtian philosophy in Britain. His 'literary services to positivism included translations of Comte, most notably of his General View of Positivism (1865). He also established himself as an apologist with his short book on The Unity of Comte's Life and Doctrine (1866), in which he undertook to reply to J.S. Mill's critique of the same year, Auguste Comte and Positivism. Mill, as presented by Bridges, was an 'incomplete Positivist', one who accepted it as a philosophy but not in its social or religious dimensions. Mill, he suggested, would have been less harsh as a critic if he had not been burdened by his own 'dread of system'.' [Stuart Brown in Dictionary of 19th century British Philosophers, I, p.146].

Price-£350