CHAPTER VII.

THE SOCIALISTIC SCHOOLS.

I.

of

I HAVE now to consider the historical theories of a class of thinkers who felt as deeply as those treated of in the preceding chapter that society was grievously diseased and disorganised, but who held very different views both as to the character and causes of the evil and as to what would be the appropriate remedy. Instead of being, like the theocratic absolutists, wholly hostile to the Revolution, they largely accepted its ideas and continued its spirit. Equality and fraternity, in particular, they regarded as the highest and most sacred truths, the latest and noblest births of time. And far from looking, as even the Catholic Liberals did, to the Church for inspiration and guidance, they believed that it had long ceased to be a lifegiving and socially beneficent institution. All the powers the past, they thought, had been proved incapable of regener ating society, of raising the masses, of extinguishing injustice and misery; and so a new way must be attempted-reorgani sation from the very foundations, and not merely some reform of religion or philosophy, of this institution or of that, which would leave the world much the same as before. It was also essential, these thinkers believed, to carry out this attempt in a direct way. It seemed to them very unfortunate that religion in its various forms had either entirely despaired of society, and aimed only at the salvation of individuals, or had assumed that society could only be saved, regenerated, through the salvation, regeneration, of individuals. Even the latter view, they said, is just the reverse of the truth. We must seek to

regenerate individuals through the regeneration of society, by the establishment of new social arrangements and institutions; and as an essential condition we must persuade men to fix their eyes on a goal, not beyond the earth, but on it; and to regard religion, like everything else, as of value only in so far as it guides society to the great object of ameliorating the condition of the class the most numerous and poor. It was thus that Claude Henri de Saint-Simon and François Marie Charles Fourier, the founders of modern socialism, were led to their peculiar speculations. These speculations, of course, only concern us here so far as they have history for their subject.1

Saint-Simon was born in 1760. He belonged to a family which professed to be descended from Charlemagne, and claimed to be better entitled to the throne of France than the Bourbons. He had, however, no aristocratic prejudices, or family pride, and was even deficient in self-respect. Religion had a slight hold on him, and his morality was lax. But he was generous and benevolent, athirst for glory, and from youth to old age resolutely bent on doing great things for mankind. He wandered in many lands, witnessed extraordinary events in the New World and in the Old, made acquaintance with all conditions of men, and had experience of the most varied phases of life and of the extremes and vicissitudes of fortune. He acted, experimented, and endured much before he undertook to teach.

The literary career of Saint-Simon began in 1803, and from 1807 to 1825 was characterised by uninterrupted activity. From 1807 to 1814, general science was the chief subject on which his mind was occupied; from 1814 to 1824, political and social organisation; and a new religion, "le nouveau Christianisme," was its latest product. He died in 1825. Of his works those which have most interest for a student of

1 On the general history of socialism in France the following are among the best works to consult: L. Reybaud, 'Études sur les réformateurs contemporains,' 4 ed., 1844; A. Sudre, 'Histoire du communisme,' 2o ed., 1887; B. Malon, 'Histoire du socialisme,' 5 vols. (the second volume); L. Stein, 'Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreich,' 2 Aufl., 1848; K. Grün, 'Die sociale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien,' 1845; and W. L. Sargant, 'Social Innovators' 1858.

the development of historical philosophy are the 'Introduction aux Travaux Scientifiques du xixe siècle,' the 'Mémoire sur la Science de l'Homme,' and the Travail sur la Gravitation Universelle.' They all belong to what may be conveniently designated the scientific period of Saint-Simon's life, the first having been written and privately circulated in 1807-8, although not, properly speaking, published till 1832; and the two latter having been written and privately circulated in 1813 and 1814, although not, properly speaking, published till 1859. It is also necessary, however, to have an acquaintance with the more important of Saint-Simon's other writings, as well as with the celebrated 'Exposition de la Doctrine Saint-Simonienne,' published in 1832, and chiefly the work of M. Bazard.1

Saint-Simon had considerable power of historical insight and historical generalisation, and abounded in ingenious views on the course and tendencies of human development. He was a lavish sower of ideas. He was not, however, specially qualified to cultivate and reap them. He had a susceptible, original, and fertile mind, but not one whose habits of thought were scientific; and he seldom either adequately verified or developed what he had conceived. He was in this respect a contrast to M. Comte, whose distinctive merits lay much less in wealth and originality of conception than in persistent pursuit of scientific certainty, and power of elaborate co-ordination and construction. Almost all Comte's leading ideas on the philosophy of history may be found more or less plainly

1 All the writings of Saint-Simon, although not very numerous, are only to be found in the Euvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfantin,' a publication begun in 1865, and now containing at least 40 volumes. His principal works are to be found in the two-volumed edition of Hubbard, 1857, and the three-volumed edition, published at Brussels in 1859. Booth's 'Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism,' 1871, and Janet's 'Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme,' 1878, are excellent studies. Probably the most instructive document on the history of the SaintSimonian school, from the death of Saint-Simon to its disruption, is the "Mémoire sur le Saint-Simonisme," by the late M. H. Carnot, published in the CompteRendu de l'Acad. d. Sc. Mor. et Pol., 1887 (7° and 8o livraisons). See also the account in Louis Blanc's' History of Ten Years,' B. III. ch. 8 (E. T.) Michelet has some interesting pages on Saint-Simon in his 'Histoire du xix siècle.' The most thorough treatment of his views on history and historical progress will be found in four articles of M. Renouvier in the 'Critique Philosophique,' Année x.

expressed in works written and either published or privately circulated by Saint-Simon before his acquaintance with Comte, which began in 1818, and came to a violent close in 1824. The Saint-Simonian doctrine, as it came to be received in the Saint-Simonian school, went far beyond what Saint-Simon had explicitly taught, and much of it, perhaps, he would have refused to acknowledge.

It is much easier to exaggerate Saint-Simon's originality than to say precisely in what it consisted. It was not originality of the highest order. It did not imply extraordinary power of independent, self-productive thought, deep intellectual penetration, or the apprehension even of a single great entirely unknown truth. It sprang chiefly from openness of mind to novel ideas of all kinds, and readiness to perceive their bearing on social reorganisation, the absorbing interest of his life. He has himself very candidly stated how much he was indebted in forming his system not only to the writings of Vicq-d'Azir, Cabanis, Bichat, and Condorcet, but also to the friendly instructions of Dr Burdin, Dr Bougon, and M. Oelsner. But the loans acknowledged made up a very large portion of his whole intellectual capital. It is enough to refer here only to those of which we should have known nothing but for his own statement. He owed to Dr Burdin those views as to the nature of knowledge, the law of the development of thought, and the order of the evolution of the sciences, which Comte appropriated, and made the basis of the system of Positivism.1 Dr Bougon removed his doubts as to the continuity of beings. M. Oelsner convinced him that the middle age was not a period of retrogression.

Saint-Simon had the merit of assigning to the science of history a clearly defined place in the general system of the sciences. The science of history forms, according to him, the second part of the science of man-that part which treats of the human species or race. The first part treats of man as an individual composed of body and mind, and so comprises a physiological and psychological section. The whole science of

1 See 'Euvres Choisis de C. H. de Saint-Simon,' 1859, t. ii. 20-35. The 'Mémoire sur la Science de l'homme,' in which the passage occurs, was first published in 1813.

man, however, is but a part of a more comprehensive science, physiology, which, as understood by Saint-Simon, includes biology, psychology, and the science of history. Mental action and historical evolution are both regarded by him as physiological functions; only the physiologist can hope to study either with success. M. Comte, I may here remark, partly followed and partly abandoned this view of Saint-Simon merging psychology in physiology, and yet including historica! evolution in the separate and final science of sociology. But surely consistency is on the side of the earlier thinker. If the progress of the individual mind be merely a biological function, how can the collective progress of any number of individual minds be an essentially different sort of function, the subject of a distinct and fundamental science?

Physiology understood as stated, is further regarded by SaintSimon as the last of a series of sciences which have gradually and slowly passed one after another out of a conjectural and theological state into a positive and properly scientific state. The entire movement of thought in history is from the one to the other of these states. The mind passes through a succession of religious phases,-fetichism, polytheism, deism,—and steadily substitutes for them in one department of inquiry after another those positive and scientific conceptions, the sum of which Saint-Simon designates by the word physicism. This law of two states is as fundamental in the system of SaintSimon as the more celebrated law of three states in that of Comte; and the latter law differs from the former only by the insertion between its terms of the metaphysical state. M. Littré was bound to have remembered this circumstance when denying M. Hubbard's statement that the law of three states was borrowed from Saint-Simon. He was correct when he said that the law of three states is not enunciated in any of Saint-Simon's writings; but as there is undoubtedly often enunciated and constantly implied a law of two states, both included in Comte's three, he was quite mistaken when he affirmed that as to the origination of Comte's historical conception Saint-Simon is hors de cause. So little is that the case, that Comte's own assertion of originality cannot be allowed for a moment to weigh against the opposing texts and facts.