The so-called eclecticism, which was for a long time regarded as the official philosophy of France, started originally with the psychological school. After Royer Collard, with Reid's philosophy of common sense as his basis, had attacked the theory of Condillac at the Sorbonne, Victor Cousin (1792–1867) began his brilliant professional career, in which he first undertook to combine the theories of Reid and Biran, and later offered a popular and rhetorical exposition of the ideas of Schelling and Hegel. He thought it possible to attain to a point by psychological observation where universal reason would be evident and truth could be directly conceived. He finds it possible, by means of this intuition, to abstract the true and the sound elements in the various systems, each of which is one-sided in itself, and organize them into a single system (Du vrai, du beau et du bien, 1838).
3. The origin of positivism must be sought within the sociological school founded by Saint Simon (1760–1825). The task of Saint Simon was to prepare the way for a social reformation. But he thought that the only possibility of such a reformation involved the founding of a new world-theory which might accomplish for the present age what Christianity had done for the Middle Ages. Such a new world-theory, in the opinion of Saint Simon, must be constructed on the foundation of an encyclopedia of the positive sciences. This is all the more true, because it must now transpire that men shall make common cause in the exploitation of nature instead of the mutual exploitation of each other. The history of the sciences reveals the fact that they begin with theological presuppositions, but gradually build upon purely natural presuppositions. As soon as this development is completed it will be possible to establish the
