Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the French philosopher and social anthropologist, was educated at the University of Paris and the École Normale Supérieure. He occupied the chair of philosophy at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1885 to 1895, when he became maître de conférences at the Sorbonne; in 1908 he was appointed titular professor. In 1916 he became editor of the Revue philosophique.

Lévy-Bruhl's early work was devoted to the history of philosophy, particularly that of Auguste Comte. While still under the influence of Comte and also of Émile Durkheim, he published La morale et la science des moeurs (Paris, 1903; translated by E. Lee as Ethics and Moral Science, London, 1905). It stressed the need for detailed empirical studies of the diverse moral attitudes and ideas of different societies as well as the adaptation of these ideas to the social structure...