BALLANCHE, PIERRE SIMON French man of letters, was born at Lyons, where the horrors of the siege led him to devote himself to an examination of the nature of so ciety, a work which brought him'into connection with the literary circle of Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier. His great work is the Palingenesie, divided into three parts, L'orphee, La formule, La vale des expiations. The first deals with the prehistoric period of the world, before the rise of religion; the second, which like the third was never completed, was to deduce a universal law from known historical facts ; the third to sketch the ultimate state of human perfection. A collected edition of his works in nine volumes was begun in 183o, but only four appeared. In 1833 a second edition in six volumes was published.
Ballanche belonged to the theocratical school which, in oppo sition to the rationalism of the preceding age, emphasized the principle of authority, placing revelation above reason and order above freedom and progress; but he endeavoured to unite what was valuable in these opposed systems. With the theocratists he held that individualism was impracticable since man exists only in and through society and he agreed with them that the origin of society was to be explained, not by human desire and efforts, but by a direct revelation from God. Lastly, he reduced the prob lem of the origin of society to that of the origin of language, and held that language was a divine gift. At this point he parts company with the theocratists, and in this very revelation of language finds a germ of progress. In the primitive state speech and thought were identical; but gradually the two separated, language becoming spoken, written, and finally printed. Thus the primitive unity and the original social order gave place to new institutions upon which thought acts, and in and through which it even draws nearer to a final unity, a palingenesis. Scat tered throughout the works of Ballanche are many valuable ideas on the connection of events which makes possible a philosophy of history. Besides the Palingenesie, Ballanche wrote a poem on the siege at Lyons (unpublished) ; Du sentiment considers dans la litterature et dans les arts (18o1) ; Antigone, a prose poem (1814) ; Essai sur les institutions sociales (1818), intended as a prelude to his great work; Le Vieillard et le jeune homme, a philosophical dialogue (1819) ; L'Homme sans nom, a novel (182o).
See Ampere, Ballanche (1848) ; Ste Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. ii.; Damiron, Philosophie de XIXe siecle; Gaston Frainnet, Essai sur la philos. de P. S. Ballanche containing unpublished letters, portraits and full bibliography) ; C. Huit, La Vie et les Oeuvres de Ballanche (1904)•