CARO, ELME MARIE (1826-1887), French philosopher, was born at Poitiers. He was educated at the Stanislas college and the Ecole Normale, where he graduated in 1848. He came to Paris in 1858 as master of conferences at the Ecole Normale. In 1861 he became inspector of the Academy of Paris, in 1864 professor of philosophy to the Faculty of Letters, and in 1874 a member of the French Academy. He married Pauline Cassin, the novelist who wrote the Peche de Madeleine and other popu lar novels. In his philosophy he was mainly concerned to de fend Christianity against modern positivism. The philosophy of Cousin influenced him strongly, but his strength lay in exposition and criticism rather than in original thought. Besides important contributions to La France and the Revue des Deux Mondes, he wrote Le Mysticisme au siecle (1852-54), L'Idee de Dieu (1864), Le Materialisme et la science (1868), fours d'epreuve (1872), Le Pessimisme au siecle (1878), La Philosophie de Goethe (2nd ed., 1880), M. Littre et le positi visme (1883), George Sand (1887), Mélanges et portraits (1888).
See E. V. Maumus, Les Philosophes Contemporains i. E. M. Caro (Paris, 1891) .