The final and most important result of Comte’s bout with mental instability in 1838 was his adoption of a new intellectual regime, which he called “cerebral hygiene.” Exasperated by the Saint-Simonians’ and journalists’ attacks on his creativity, he decided that he needed to preserve his “characteristic originality.” Henceforth he abstained from reading newspapers, books, and journals, except the weekly bulletins of the Academy of Sciences, which he only glanced through irregularly. To relax, he did permit himself, however, to read the “great poets of every age and nation.”Related posts:
6 November 2018
Cerebral Hygiene
Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 485 (footnotes omitted):
