ABSTRACT
The thinking of Auguste Comte was a perfect reflection of the intellectual ferment provoked by the shock of the Revolution. As his classification of the sciences demonstrates so eloquently, Comte's grand plan was to understand the progress of human intelligence. Antoine Augustin Cournot was a mathematician, economist and philosopher. In the same vein as Auguste Comte's work, that of Ernest Renan bears the imprint of the French Revolution. With Renan, the abrupt acceleration of history that flowed from that event gave rise to many concerns and uncertainties but also to great hopes. Like Renan, Hippolyte Taine believed that the science of history must expose the principles governing the mental evolution of peoples. At the crossroads of romanticism and positivism, the influence of Renan and Taine was largely confined to the realm of literary criticism. Convinced of the benefits of science, he was sure that the development of positivism was the outstanding achievement of the intellectual history of the past three centuries.
