SOURCE: "Introduction to Pareto's Sociology," in On Mosca and P areto, Librairie Droz, 1972, pp. 55-78.

In the following essay, which was originally published in Italian in 1964, Bobbio examines the formal structure of Trattato di sociologia generale.

As is known, the Trattato di sociologia generale was born after a long gestation as a work which can only be described as "monstrous," the word "monster" being used in the triple sense of "prodigy", "deformed creature" and, neutrally, "unusual event". Prodigious in the Trattato is the breadth of design and research; from an introduction to economics, the sociology, as a result of subsequent additions, became a detailed analysis and a complete reconstruction of social equilibrium and of the factors which determine it. The analysis is based on a mass of facts, particularly of ancient and modern history, which have been gathered as a result of a varied and haphazard reading of...