Frederic Harrison was the primary spokesman for the application of Positivist philosophy to social, historical, political, and literary questions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As an essayist, novelist, translator, editor, and prolific contributor to the quarterly journals, he preached Positivism as a new religion and even founded a Church of Positivism in London.

Born in Muswell Hill, a rural area later engulfed by London, Harrison was the son of Frederick Harrison, a stockbroker, and Jane Brice Harrison. He attended King's College School until 1849, was graduated second in his class, and entered Wadham College, Oxford, on scholarship. He received his B.A. in 1853 and remained as a fellow of the college for two years. He was eventually admitted to the bar, but his activities followed his other interests, which ranged among art, literature, theology, politics, and philosophy. He later wrote about English law in On Jurisprudence...