Enrique José Varona y Pera was a Cuban philosopher, statesman, and man of letters. Beginning in the mid-1870s, Varona dominated Cuban intellectual life for fifty years. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Havana, was founding editor of Revista cubana, and took an active part in education and politics. A former member of the Spanish Cortes, he became a revolutionary colleague of José Martí, was appointed secretary of public instruction and fine arts after the 1898 revolution, and served as vice-president of Cuba from 1913 to 1917.

Varona, one of the leading Latin American positivists, adapted French positivism and British empiricism to the contemporary sociopolitical and cultural situation of Cuba. Logic, psychology, and ethics were his primary philosophic concerns.

J. S. Mill's analysis of induction served as the basis of Varona's work in...