 Lastarria’s individualism was an exception among those Hispanic American liberals who subscribed to positivist philosophy. The latter came to see society as an organism, of which the individual is a part, subject to fixed laws that determine its development. In their defense of a scientific approach to social problems that was based on observation and experience, they claimed that law had to be adjusted to social reality, not the other way around. They thus rejected the “utopias” of earlier liberals and came to regard the “old” defense of natural rights and popular sovereignty as metaphysical abstractions that were out of touch with reality. In the extreme, positivist liberals sided with the defense of authoritarian governments in the name of order and progress. In Mexico, positivist philosophy became the official creed of the governing elite, the so called “scientists”, who did not repudiate their liberal credentials. Their positivist version of liberalism, which they called “conservative” liberalism, served as the ideological framework for the justification of dictatorial rule. In Brazil, by contrast, positivism displaced liberalism as the ideology of the ruling elite with the fall of the monarchy and the advent of the republic in 1889 through a military coup. As has been maintained, Brazilian republicans, in their attacks to the oligarchy and distrust of the masses, were attracted to the positivist idea that scientifically grounded social reform had to be carried out by a technocratic elite (Krebs 2002: 269).