Correspondance inédite.

Paris, au siège de la Société Positiviste, 1903-1904. 4 volumes. (4), 346 pp.; (4), 403, (1) pp.; (4), 340 pp.; (4) 339, (1) pp. 8vo. Sewn, original printed covers, a bit discoloured along edges, uncut. Comte came under the influence of the writers with whom throughout the subsequent course of his life he was to retain some degree of intellectual affiliation during his years at the École Polytechnique. He was influenced by Bonald and de Maistre, from whom he borrowed the notion of an order governing the evolution of human society, by Condorcet, from whom he borrowed the idea that this evolution was attended by progress, and between 1818 and 1824 he was associated as secretary, disciple and friend with Saint-Simon, who stimulated his interest in economics. And it was during this period that Comte worked out his general conception of social science, to which he gave the name sociology. His influence can be seen in the French scientific movement of the last half of the nineteenth century, represented by Taine, Renan and Berthelot, and in the writings of such outstanding English figures as John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, in spite of the latter's repudiation of Comte's laws of evolution. Contemporary sociology not only owes to the creator of positivism its existence as an independent science but possesses the seal of his authority upon three fundamental precepts in its methodology: the necessity of treating social facts like physical phenomena, of reducing them in the final analysis to social beliefs and of applying to them the method of experimental investigation (Réne Hubert in IESS). - All volumes weak in the original covers.