Like his contemporaries, Lavrov was a student of Hegel and of the Hegelian left, his first literary works being devoted to Hegel; but whereas so many Russian writers of that day remained Feuerbachians, Lavrov returned from Feuerbach to Kant. He was acquainted with French philosophy, that of Cousin and others, but the influence of Comte and of positivism generally were decisive upon his development. Among the French socialists, Proudhon influenced him more than Louis Blanc or any other. The writings of Darwin and Spencer had a great effect upon him, and through a study of the doctrine of evolution he was led to make the Comtist idea of progress the central notion of his system. In epistemology, too, Lavrov learned much from Herbert Spencer.
Lavrov was a contemporary of Černyševskii, and was influenced by that writer. The two men passed through the same philosophical school, and were busied with and disquieted by the same problems. But whereas Černyševskii decided in favour of positivist materialism and utilitarianism, Lavrov turned back to Kant, though, without abandoning positivist materialism and utilitarianism. Lavrov was keenly
the Study of the Development of Human Thought, 1898; Arnoldi, Contemporary Teaching concerning Morals and the History of Ethics, 1904; Attempt at a History of Modern Thought, vol. I, Introductory, part 1 Preliminaries, The Tasks and History of Thought, book I, Prehistorical (1888).—Petr Aleksěevič Lavrov was born in 1823. His father was a retired colonel, and a wealthy landowner. From the age of thirteen the son was educated in the artillery school for an officer's career. Under the father's pedantic and unsystematic supervision the boy devoted himself at home to an unregulated course of reading, this being facilitated by his knowledge of French and German. When nineteen years of age he became an officer, and when twenty-one he was appointed teacher of mathematics in his school, subsequently becoming teacher at the artillery academy. He married in 1847, his wife being of German descent. His education at home was conservative. At the military school his views were modified as a result of his training in exact science. The excitement aroused by the Crimean war affected him no less than others; his poems, voicing the views of the opposition and revolutionary in sentiment, were widely circulated in manuscript, but they were topical verses rather than the expression of any carefully considered program. Lavrov, like his contemporaries, had given much time to the study of German philosophy, and in addition was well read in French socialism, being familiar with the works of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc, and Proudhon, and with those of the Catholic socialist Buchez and his pupils. These influences led him in 1862 to join the secret society Zemlja i Volja, in which, however, he did not play an active part. At this epoch, too, he was acquainted with Černyševskii. In 1865 his wife died. A year later, after the attempt of Karakozov (to whose circle he did not belong), he was arrested on account of his clandestine literary
