e fourth volume of his
_Positive Philosophy_ that the word sociological is used for the first
time.

Comte, if he was foremost, was not first in the search for a positive
science of society, which would give man that control over men that he
had over external nature. Montesquieu, in his _The Spirit of Laws_,
first published in 1747, had distinguished in the organization of
society, between form, "the particular structure," and the forces, "the
human passions which set it in motion." In his preface to this first
epoch-making essay in what Freeman calls "comparative politics,"
Montesquieu suggests that the uniformities, which he discovered beneath
the wide variety of positive law, were contributions not merely to a
science of law, but to a science of mankind.

I have first of all considered mankind; and the result of my
thoughts has been, that amidst such an infinite diversity of
laws and manners, they are not solely conducted by the caprice
of fancy.[5]

Hume, likewise, put politics among the natural sciences.[6] Condorcet
wanted to make history positive.[7] But there were, in the period
between 1815 and 1840 in France, conditions which made the need of a new
science of politics peculiarly urgent. The Revolution had failed and the
political philosophy, which had directed and justified it, was bankrupt.
France, between 1789 and 1815, had adopted, tried, and rejected no less
than ten different constitutions. But during this period, as Saint-Simon
noted, society, and the human beings who compose society, had not
changed. It was evident that government was not, in any such sense as
the philosophers had assumed, a mere artefact and legislative
construction. Civilization, as Saint-Simon conceived it, was a part of
nature. Social change was part of the whole cosmic process. He proposed,
therefore, to make politics a science as positive as physics. The
subject-matter of political science, as he conceived it, was not so
much political forms as social conditions. History had been literature.
It was destined to become a science.[8]

Comte called himself Saint-Simon's pupil. It is perhaps more correct to
say Saint-Simon formulated the problem for which Comte, in his _Positive
Philosophy_, sought a solution. It was Comte's notion that with the
arrival of sociology the distinction which had so long existed, and
still exists, between philosophy, in which men define their wishes, and
natural science, in which th