A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

implicit in the whole literature of Deism; and had been attempted with various degrees of success by Bodin, Vico, Montesquieu, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, Voltaire, Volney, and Condorcet, as well as by lesser men. [1924] So clear had been the classic lead to naturalistic views of social growth in the Politics of Aristotle, and so strong the influence of the new naturalistic spirit, that it is seen even in the work of Goguet (1769), who sets out as biblically as Bossuet; while in Germany Herder and Kant framed really luminous generalizations; and a whole group of sociological writers rose up in the Scotland of the middle and latter parts of the century. [1925] Here again there was reaction; but in France the orthodox Guizot did much to promote broader views than his own; Eusèbe Salverte in his essay De la Civilisation (1813) made a highly intelligent effort towards a general view; and Charles Comte in his Traité de Législation (1826) made a marked scientific advance on the suggestive work of Herder. As we have seen, the eclectic Jouffroy put human affairs in the sphere of natural law equally with cosmic phenomena. At length, in the great work of Auguste Comte, scientific method was applied so effectively and concretely to the general problem that, despite his serious fallacies, social science again took rank as a solid study.