Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836)

"I have to return you my thanks for the very acceptable present you have been so kind as to make me of the two first parts of your work on Ideologie, & of the Analysis of Dupuis. both are on subjects highly interesting. my present position not permitting me to read beyond the papers of the day, I treasure them with those things which are to sweeten a retirement to which age and a passion for letters are daily pressing me. the worth of these works is already stamped by the judgment of those whose good opinion is most flattering. that of my collegues [sic] of the American Philosophical society will be manifested to you by their election of you as a member of their institution." — Thomas Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, 14 February 1806… (meer)

Destutt-Tracy is, in my judgment, the ablest writer living on intellectual subjects, or the operations of the understanding. His three 8vo volumes on Ideology, which constitute the foundation of what he has since written, I have not entirely read; because I am not fond of reading what is merely abstract, and unapplied immediately to some useful science. Bonaparte, with his repeated derisions of Ideologists (squinting at this author) has by this time felt that true wisdom does not lie in mere practice without principle. (TJ to John Adams, 14 October 1816)

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=rbc3&fileName=rbc0001_2007jeffca...… (meer)

"I have to return you my thanks for the very acceptable present you have been so kind as to make me of the two first parts of your work on Ideologie, & of the Analysis of Dupuis. both are on subjects highly interesting. my present position not permitting me to read beyond the papers of the day, I treasure them with those things which are to sweeten a retirement to which age and a passion for letters are daily pressing me. the worth of these works is already stamped by the judgment of those whose good opinion is most flattering. that of my collegues [sic] of the American Philosophical society will be manifested to you by their election of you as a member of their institution." — Thomas Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, 14 February 1806… (meer)