In a merely logical point of view, the only leading conception
for which I am indebted to him is that of the Inverse Deductive Method,
as the one chiefly applicable to the complicated subjects of History and
Statistics: a process differing from the more common form of the
deductive method in this--that instead of arriving at its conclusions
by general reasoning, and verifying them by specific experience (as is
the natural order in the deductive branches of physical science), it
obtains its generalizations by a collation of specific experience, and
verifies them by ascertaining whether they are such as would follow from
known general principles. This was an idea entirely new to me when I
found it in Comte: and but for him I might not soon (if ever) have
arrived at it.
I had been long an ardent admirer of Comte's writings before I had any
communication with himself; nor did I ever, to the last, see him in the
body. But for some years we were frequent correspondents, until our
correspondence became controversial, and our zeal cooled. I was the
first to slacken correspondence; he was the first to drop it. I found,
and he probably found likewise, that I could do no good to his mind, and
that all the good he could do to mine, he did by his books.
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