AUGUSTE COMTE 13 
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 unity; 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-royalistic 
principles of his parents to become a free-thinking republican; 
steeping his young 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 earlier systems.2, 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. 
1 Cf. Lévy-Brihl, History of Modern Philosophy in France, pp. 394-396. Waen- 
tig, op. cit., pp. 221 ff., 387 ff. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, p. 52. 
2 For catalogue of sources of Comte’s philosophy, see Defourney, La Sociologie 
Positive, pp. 352 ff. 
3 Positive Philosophy, ii, pp. 61 f. 
4 For an able discussion of the controversy as to the dependence of Comte on 
