ABSTRACT
The great theme French thinkers would oppose to the British idealization of natural individuals was the ideal of society. The Baron de Montesquieu can rightly be taken as progenitor of this theme in French thought. Later theorists in the tradition—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Auguste Comte, and Emile Durkheim—would name him as the seminal inspiration for the modern science of society. Durkheim may also have been exposed to the activity of Comte's erstwhile disciple Emile Littre, who organized a sociology society while Durkheim was in secondary school. Although Montesquieu became known as a follower of Locke and a champion of "English" notions like liberty, toleration, and constitutional government, his treatment of those notions rested on distinctive positions. He believed that freedom does not stand as an absolute value derivable from the properties of human nature and related human rights. Montesquieu believed that laws are based on customs and manners, political structures on climate and societal conditions.
