My aims in this essay are both iconoclastic and constructive. An iconoclast, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a "breaker of images", "one who assails cherished beliefs". I begin by taking to task a series of widely held views, relating above all to Durkheim's writings, of the past development of social theory. These views, as I have tried to show elsewhere,¹ are myths; here I try not so much to shatter their images of the intellectual origins of sociology as to show that they are like reflections in a hall of distorting mirrors. I do not, however, propose to analyse the development of classical nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social theory for its own sake alone, but wish to draw out some implications for problems of sociology today.