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“Altruism” did not exist in Britain prior to 1852, and when the term came into use, it was as an expression borrowed from French. Coined by Auguste Comte, “altruism” drew both on cerebral science and humanistic religion. It brought together his visions of biology and sociology, of the science of the brain and the religion of Humanity. Comte summarized his aims in the following words, in his Système de politique positive: “To live for others thus becomes a natural summary of the whole of positive morality, which biology must embrace as a universal principle and even detach from various troubling influences.” Comte's keyword, altruism, passed from its French, positivist origins to a broader intellectual context in Victorian Britain. “Altruism” became a scientific, political, and religious watchword in Britain from the 1870s onwards, and by the early twentieth century it was a well-established term in ethical and scientific discourse throughout the English-speaking world. This article asks what role the term played in Comte's own writings, and how it made its way into the vocabulary of British intellectuals (especially given Comte’s very mixed reputation at this period) by exploring his impact on the works of a range of British thinkers and writers, notably John Stuart Mill, John Henry Bridges, Henry Sidgwick and Herbert Spencer.