J. R. Partington, Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911) *An existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and this must be said- in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism And Humanism, 1947 translated by Philip Maniret 1948 p. 55
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The philosopher Comte has made the statement that chemistry is a non-mathematical science. He also told us that astronomy had reached a stage when further progress was impossible. These remarks, coming after Dalton's atomic theory, and just before Guldberg and Waage were to lay the foundations of chemical dynamics, Kirchhoff to discover the reversal of lines in the solar spectrum, serve but to emphasize the folly of having "recourse to farfetched and abstracted Ratiocination," and should teach us to be "very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty".

— J. R. Partington

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The philosopher Comte has made the statement that chemistry is a non-mathematical science. He also told us that astronomy had reached a stage when further progress was impossible. These remarks, coming after Dalton's atomic theory, and just before Guldberg and Waage were to lay the foundations of chemical dynamics, Kirchhoff to discover the reversal of lines in the solar spectrum, serve but to emphasize the folly of having "recourse to farfetched and abstracted Ratiocination," and should teach us to be "very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty"." in the context of "J. R. Partington, Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911) *An existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and this must be said- in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism And Humanism, 1947 translated by Philip Maniret 1948 p. 55" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Auguste Comte" (Quotes about Comte) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Auguste Comte

About Auguste Comte

Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte (19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher who coined the terms "sociology" and "altruism" and developed forms of social discipline he called Positivism.