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9 - The Death of the Great Priest of Humanity and His Influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2010

Mary Pickering
Mary Pickering
Affiliation:
San José State University, California
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Summary

I saw in a Liverpool paper an announcement from a French paper of the death of Comte. It seems as if there would be no thinkers left in the world.

John Stuart Mill to Harriet Mill, September 16, 1857

THE DEATH OF VIEILLARD AND COMTE'S UNRAVELING

In the spring of 1857, Comte was gratified to hear from Vieillard that “all the serious men of our government” regarded positivism as “the only possible guide for the near future.” Napoleon III had even read Comte's proposition at the end of the Appel and admitted to Vieillard that neither he nor his wife really believed their son would ever take over. Comte gave Vieillard the task of telling him to make more solid preparations for the future. Ever the optimist, he hoped Napoleon III – “our dictator” – would be guided by his recommendations for a successor, although he feared the emperor was too egotistical to do so.

Soon after being given this mission, the sixty-six-year-old Vieillard died suddenly in May 1857. One aristocrat wrote of the death of this “republican” whose affectation of “honesty and independence” had secured his rise to the Senate: “The qualities of his heart were undoubtedly excellent, but except for the Emperor, who loved him, his death was a loss to no one. One can find in France 20,000 senators with the same strength.”

Type
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Auguste Comte
An Intellectual Biography
 , pp. 526 - 579
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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