University of Virginia Library

8482. TRACY (Comte de), Books of.—

Destutt Tracy is, in my judgment, the ablest
living writer on intellectual subjects, or the
operations of the understanding. His three
octavo volumes on Ideology, which constitute
the foundation of what he has since written, I
have not entirely read; because I am not fond
of reading what is merely abstract, and unapplied
immediately to some useful science.
Bonaparte, with his repeated derisions of Ideologists
(squinting at this author), has by this

time felt that true wisdom does not lie in mere
practice without principle. The next work
Tracy wrote was the “Commentary on Montesquieu ”, never published in the original, because
not safe; but translated and published in Philadelphia,
yet without the author's name. He
has since permitted his name to be mentioned.
Although called a commentary, it is, in truth, an
elementary work on the principles of government,
comprised in about three hundred pages
octavo. He has lately published a third work,
on “Political Economy”, comprising the whole
subject within about the same compass; in
which all its principles are demonstrated with
the severity of Euclid, and, like him, without
ever using a superfluous word. I have procured
this to be translated, and have been four years
endeavoring to get it printed; but as yet, without
success. In the meantime, the author has
published the original in France, which he
thought unsafe while Bonaparte was in power.
* * * He has his fourth and last work now
in the press at Paris, closing as he conceives, the
circle of metaphysical sciences. This work,
which is on ethics, I have not seen, but suspect
I shall differ from it in its foundation, although
not in its deductions. I gather from his other
works that he adopts the principle of Hobbes,
that justice is founded in contract solely, and
does not result from the construction of man.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 38.
(M. 1816)