Elme Marie Caro was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 philosopher.

His father, a professor of philosophy, gave him an excellent education at the Stanislas College

Collège Stanislas de Paris

Le Collège Stanislas de Paris is a private Catholic school in Paris, situated on "Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs" in the Montparnasse arrondissement. It has approximately 3,000 students, and is the largest private school in France....

 and the École Normale, where he graduated in 1848. After being professor of philosophy at several provincial universities, he received the degree of doctor, and came to Paris in 1858 as master of conferences at the École 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 Académie française

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

. He married Pauline Cassin, the author of the Pêche de Madeleine and other well-known novels.

In his philosophy be was mainly concerned to defend Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 against modern Positivism

Positivism

Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....

. The philosophy of Victor Cousin

Victor Cousin

Victor Cousin was a French philosopher. He was a proponent of Scottish Common Sense Realism and had an important influence on French educational policy.-Early life:...

 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

Revue des deux mondes

The Revue des deux Mondes is a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine that has been published in Paris since 1829....

, he wrote Du mysticisme au XVIIIe siècle (1852-1854), L'Idée de Dieu (1864), Le Matérialisme et la science (1868), Le Pessimisme au XIX' siècle (1878), Jours d'épreuve (1872), M. Littré et le positivisme (1883), George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

(1887), Mélanges et portraits (i888), La Philosophie de Goethe (2nd ed., 1880).