ABSTRACT
As we have seen, Montesquieu the sociologist was first and foremost intensely aware of human and social diversity. For him, the problem was to create order in an apparent chaos. He succeeded in doing so by observing types of government or society, by listing the determinants which influence all collectivities, and perhaps, in the last analysis, by evolving several rational principles of universal validity, though these may be violated in some cases. Montesquieu started from diversity and arrived, not without difficulty, at human unity.
