ABSTRACT
The French materialists equally with the deists Voltaire and Rousseau held this conviction to an almost fanatical degree, and often made the greatest personal sacrifices for it. The utilitarians attributed to enlightened monarch powers of social change that are the sole property of society. The contribution of Rousseau to a theory of political society is as great as those made by all other philosophes as a group to the sociology of politics. The act of people valuing each other created the conditions for human obligation to each other, and with that man moved on from the idea of society to that of polity or, civility. Helvétius indicated that such multiplicity of laws leads to ignorance and failure on the part of governing classes to execute the public will. The presumed "father of sociology", Auguste Comte, summarized the composition of sociology thus: scientific men, ought in our day, to elevate politics to the rank of a science of observation.
