Historians have long recognized the influence of Darwinism and German idealism on late Victorian intellectual discourse. In Positivist Republic, Gillis Harp argues that, in America, Auguste Comte's positivism constituted another formative influence--one that has not been fully appreciated. In fact, according to Harp, Comtean positivism was critical to the transformation of Anglo-American social and political thought during the last third of the nineteenth century.

Harp identifies a thread of Comtean ideas running through the writings of Lester F. Ward, Edward Bellamy,...