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EDITOR’S NOTE - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X - Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society [1833]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X - Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by F.E.L. Priestley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

2nd ed. London: Trübner, 1866. Reprinted from 1st ed., ibid., 1865; and from Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, LXXXIII (Apr., 1865), 339-405 [Part I], and ibid., LXXXIV (July, 1865), 1-42 [Part II], these two articles signed “J.S.M.” The former is headed: “Art. I.—The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. / 1. Cours de Philosophie Positive. Par Auguste Comte, Répétiteur d’Analyse transcendante et de Mécanique rationnelle à l’Ecole Polytechnique, et Examinateur des Candidats qui se destinent à cette Ecole. Deuxième Edition, augmentée d’une Préface par E. Littré, et d’une Table alphabétique des matières. [6 vols.] Paris: [Baillière,] 1864. / 2. Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive. Par. E. Littré. Paris: [Hachette,] 1863.” The second is headed: “Art. I.—Later Speculations of Auguste Comte,” and lists the works reviewed as in the footnote to 328 below, giving Comte as the author of the first four books.

Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “Two articles on Comte’s Philosophy in the Westminster Review for April and July 1865, afterwards reprinted and published by Trübner as a volume entitled ‘Auguste Comte and Positivism’ ” (MacMinn, 95). For further discussion of the writing of the work and its relation to other essays in this volume, see the Textual Introduction, cxxix-cxxxiv above.

The following text is collated with that of the 1st ed., and that in the Westminster. In the footnoted variants, the 2nd ed. is indicated by “66”; the 1st by “651”; the Westminster by “65”. There are no changes or corrections in the offprints of the articles or in the two copies of the 2nd ed. in the Somerville College Library, but several corrections are found in the copy of the 1st ed. The following typographical errors, all of which were corrected in the 2nd ed. (and hence are not listed in the Textual Introduction above), are marked for correction: 290.40 “we” corrected to “he”, 320.n4 “with” corrected to “into”, 320.n11 “part” corrected to “fact”, 338.39 “then” corrected to “them”, 345.33 the “a” before “private life” deleted. Two errors in 65 that were partially altered in 651, and altered again in 66 are marked in the Somerville College copy of the 1st ed.: 296.12 “of” altered to “to” (see 296c-c), and 342.39 “it all he” altered to “all it” (see 342e-e). At 338.12 the correction indicated (“others” for “other”) is retained as a variant because the earlier form is found in 65 as well as 651; so is that at 352.34 (“desirous” for “desiring”) because the incomplete correction was not adopted. Finally, the change indicated in the Somerville copy at 332.38 (“evoked” for “invoked”) is accepted in the text below, though the change was not made in 66. One substantive variant occurs in the posthumous 3rd ed. (London: Trübner, 1882) and therefore in the paperback photographic reproduction of that edition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961): at 351.39 the reading in 1882 is “it is supposed” rather than “as he calculates”. The minor changes in the list of publications listed in the second part between 651 and 66 are not here indicated (JSM gives the identification of Comte as “Auteur du Systême de Philosophie Positive” in the first title, and as “Auteur du Systême de Philosophie Positive et du Systême de Politique Positive” in the next three titles; the common eighteenth-century spelling, “Systême” rather than “Système”, found in the list in 65 is retained in 651 at the second appearance of the word in the fourth title).