A Modern Sociology

Abstract

IT would seem that little is known about the personality and private life of this voluntary Italian exile who, at the age of forty-six years, was appointed to the chair of economics at the University of Lausanne. Up to that time he had been an engineer and had held a post in the railway administration. An intense interest in the concrete economic problems of the day led him to engage in political controversy. In the course of these activities Pareto was an impassioned advocate of free trade he made personal attacks on men prominent in politics, and in consequence he was, or he believed himself to be, persecuted by the Government. Thus he gladly accepted the Swiss offer when it came, and the remaining twenty years of his life were spent in a villa near Lausanne, where he seems to have lived very quietly and in considerable luxury. A year before he died, Mussolini came into power, and Pareto found himself hailed as an intellectual precursor of Fascism, created an Italian senator and otherwise honoured. He has also obtained a considerable following in the United States, where this work was translated.

The Mind and Society (Trattato di Sociologia generate)

By Vilfredo Pareto. Edited by Arthur Livingston. Translated by Andrew Bongiorno and Arthur Livingston with the advice and active co-operation of James Harvey Rogers. Vol. 1: Non-Logical Conduct. Pp. xviii + 497. Vol. 2: Theory of Residues. Pp. vi + 499–884. Vol. 3: Theory of Derivations. Pp. vii + 885–1432. Vol. 4: The General Form of Society. Pp. vii + 1433–2033. (London and Toronto: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1935.) 4 vols., £4 4s. 0d. net.