AUGUSTE COMTE fj 



A Frenchman of the south, warm-blooded, impulsive, senti- 

 mental yet withal practical; drilled in early youth under the 

 educational ideal of his day with special emphasis on mathematics 

 and logic; taught to seek in all things system and imity; breath- 

 ing from earliest years the spirit of revolt from all external 

 authority; so influenced by his social environment and especially 

 by one master that his rebellious nature found expression at 

 fourteen years of age by turning from the catholic-royahstic 

 principles of his parents to become a free- thinking republican; 

 steeping his yoimg precocious mind in the French philosophical 

 writings of the eighteenth century which were grossly material- 

 istic, together with the writings of Hume and the English econo- 

 mists; conscious of the failure of Rousseau and his followers to 

 regenerate society, and of the failure, too, of the retrogressive 

 theory of de Maistre and the sentimental schemes of Owen, 

 LeBlanc, Fourier and Saint-Simon, Comte saw at last the possi- 

 bilities of the scientific method applied to social phenomena and 

 wrought out that system of social philosophy which in broad 

 outline stands as the foundation of the prevailing theories of 

 social progress today.^ 



It has been said that all the elements in the Positive Philosophy 

 may be found in earHer systems.^ Comte devotes one whole 

 chapter to a review and criticism of the methods and conclusions 

 of some of his most illustrious predecessors in the field of social 

 philosophy including Aristotle, Montesquieu, Condorcet and 

 Adam Smith whom he praises as an exception to the economists 

 for whom otherwise he has little use.^ He omits all mention of 

 Saint-Simon, however, doubtless owing to his pique against the 

 one whom he recognized as master till their break in 1834, 

 although he was indebted to Saint-Simon more than to any one 

 else not only for his enthusiasm for social regeneration but also for 

 some of the most important principles of his Positive Philosophy.^ 



^ Cf . L€vy-Bruhl, History of Modern Philosophy in France, pp. 394-396. Waen- 

 tig, op. cit., pp. 221 ff., 387 fE. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, p. 52. 



2 For catalogue of sources of Comte's philosophy, see Defoumey, La Sociologie 

 Positive, pp. 352 ff. 



' Positive Philosophy, ii, pp. 61 f. 



* For an able discussion of the controversy as to the dependence of Comte on 



