CHAPTER VI SAINT-SIMON AND THE SAINT-SIMONIANS (a) SAINT-SIMON

COUNT HENRI-CLAUDE DE ROUVROY DE SAINT-SIMON¹ is one of the great eccentrics of history, though indeed it may be that his eccentricity has been accentuated in the growth of legend and tradition. He was a man who deliberately, with something of the purposefulness of Faust, set himself to drain the cup of life to the dregs and to taste all experience. In consequence, having been all things and having touched all extremes, he emerges as a somewhat confusing bundle of contradictions and incoherences, with nevertheless one central purpose dominating all his life. Born in 1760, into one of the most ancient families of France, claiming descent from Charlemagne, Saint-Simon never ceased to be the grand seigneur, conscious of the great things expected of him; although to describe him as the last gentleman and the first socialist, as has been done, is perhaps to use a phrase too devastating in its implications. ‘Rise, M. le Comte, you have great things to do to-day’: such, according to the legend, was the formula with which his valet was instructed to call him, when still a boy, to each new morning. It is at least true to the spirit of Saint-Simon, for ever panting after great things, and true to his love of doing things in the large spectacular manner. When but a lad he fought, and fought well, in the American War of Independence, returning with military rank disproportionate to his years. America left a permanent impression upon him. On the one hand, despite his creditable record, it turned him very decisively against the profession of arms. In his own words, he realised that his profession was not that of a soldier. It would be unjust to say that America made him a pacifist; it certainly made him a man of peace. Further, America revealed itself to him as very visibly the representative of a new era, a country which had shed, or had never acquired, the trappings of feudalism, a country where all men worked and none were idle.

His colourful life can be but glanced at. Back in Europe, taking Mexico on the way (with projects for a Panama Canal), he abandoned the army and travelled to Spain and Holland. His consciousness of his mission grew upon him: ‘Je devais beaucoup observer,’² as he said later with much simplicity. The French Revolution found him renouncing his title, and becoming Citoyen Bonhomme; it also enabled him to speculate in Church lands and thereby acquire a considerable fortune—not for low ends as he was careful to explain, but as a means to the execution of great projects. The revolution also consigned him for about a year to prison, where Charlemagne, his great ancestor, appeared to him in a vision, and spoke comfortably to him.

At an age when, as he over-modestly says, his brain had lost its malleability, Saint-Simon took to serious study, but in the grand manner he required the most eminent savants to wait upon him. True to his declared intention to lead ‘la vie la plus originale et la plus active possible’¹ he studied much more than his studies. Also he married; according to the legend, he entered on matrimony, stipulating for a three years' contract. A wife at the end of the banqueting table obviously laid a better foundation for an intensive study of mankind than could be hoped for from any arrangements resting on more transitory birds of passage. The story of the three years’ contract may be a myth; but Saint-Simon, in his fragment of autobiography, says unashamedly: ‘J'ai usé du mariage comme d'un moyen pour étudier les savans, chose qui me paraissait nécessaire pour l'éxecution de mon enterprise’²—a statement which is at least not inconsistent with the grotesque tradition. In any case, marriage as a device for studying society was not a success. Saint-Simon complained that his guests ate more than they talked, or at least more than their talk was worth; and he draws a pathetic picture of himself sitting silently in a corner, listening to twaddle and falling asleep. The Saint-Simonian home may have been a ‘social centre’; but one year was enough, and at the end of this period divorce put an end to this phase of his education. Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon; and went to call on Madame de Stael.

His visit to Madame de Stael is the peg on which more foolish legends have been hung. What is certain is that in the following year (1802), having reached the moderately mature age of 42, he published his first work, the Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to his Contemporaries. Having put pen to paper, Saint-Simon, with an increasing consciousness of a mission and with that passionate vehemence which never deserted him, continued to write and to write incessantly, pouring out the most extraordinary series of pamphlets, catechisms, projects, plans of later books, plans of books that were never written—a disordered, turbulent flood of words. Gone were the spacious years of worldly splendour. His marriage had proved a somewhat too expensive finishing course. He sank into poverty, living and starving in a garret, earning a pittance as a clerk, supported in part by a former retainer. In his despair he attempted suicide, with but indifferent success. His last years were somewhat less uneasy. An unsuccessful prosecution for sedition at the age of 59 earned him a certain measure of publicity, which always has its uses. Before his death he attracted a certain number of disciples among whom for a time were Thierry and Comte. He died among friends, and his last words (or so nearly his last words as to make no difference) were a summary of his life: ‘Souvenez-vous que pour faire quelque chose de grand, il faut être passionné.’ The epilogue is strangely in tune with the prologue. As a boy, fifty years earlier, he had each day eagerly sprung from his bed, because great things were waiting to be done, and to be done that day. He died, impressing on his disciples that, in order to achieve great things, passion is that which is needful. Despite his chaotic and incoherent life, there is a strange unity about Saint-Simon. He was dominated by a passion for the achievement of great things.

Saint-Simon's writings are a confused jungle, partly because as a grand seigneur he somewhat despised the literary arts; and also in part because for him time was always urgent. He was always writing to catch the post: next week would be too late. He acknowledges his shortcomings with considerable naiveté and some condescension: ‘I write because I have new things to say; I will present my ideas as they have been forged by my spirit. I will leave to professional writers the care of giving them polish. I write like a gentleman, like a descendant of the Counts of Vermandois, like an inheritor of the pen of the Duc de Saint-Simon’¹ Thus are the ‘ecrivains de profession’ put in their proper and subordinate places. But it is chiefly the urgency of things that explains Saint-Simon's turbulent disorder. There is no time for literary grace: he is compelled to give his ideas ‘dans leur état de nudité native.’² He would have approved the spirit of Lord Keynes' advice to the economist of a later generation that he should cultivate a ‘willingness to spill his ideas, to flick them at the world,’ and the implied injunction ‘to pluck the day, and fling pamphlets into the wind.’ Never was a writer so assiduous as was Saint-Simon in flicking his ideas at the world, so free (in the words of an earlier enthusiast) from ‘le soin vulgaire d'effacer ses contradictions.’³

What were these so new things that Saint-Simon had to say? What, it may be asked, was all the hurry about? In one sense, the Saint-Simonian problem, if not the Saint-Simonian solution, can be put in a few words. He wrote, be it remembered, in the back-wash of the French Revolution, and in the years following the Napoleonic Wars. The world was confronting a new era; the eighteenth century, an age of criticism and destruction, had gone; it was to be the task of the new century to construct and rebuild. The feudal world had passed, giving way to an Industrial Age. Also the world, in this era of transition, when the old was dead and the new not yet born, had lost its guides. The teeming multitudes of Europe were as sheep without a shepherd—and sheep need a shepherd. The temporal power had gone; the spiritual power was no longer respected. Where in the new age—an industrial age with all the implications of an industrial age—are we to find a new temporal power and, even more important, a new spiritual power? This is the question that obsessed Saint-Simon; and for the salvation of the world an answer had to be found forthwith. Herein lies the strange unity of Saint-Simon. He may have given a different answer every time he flicked a pamphlet in the face of the world; but it was always the same question he was trying to answer.

Perhaps at the risk of some disproportion it may be permissible to look at his first book in somewhat greater detail than will be possible elsewhere. In its chaotic confusion, its grotesqueness of suggestion if taken literally, in its appeal to divine vision and illumination, this first publication, purporting to be letters from an inhabitant of Geneva, is pure Saint-Simon; not only so, it may with a little imagination be viewed as the whole of Saint-Simon, indicating in embryo the various directions along which subsequent pamphlets were to gush. The first letter, expounding the proposal, extends to a little over a page; there is a ‘reply from a friend,’ purporting to ask for more details, but in fact blowing off Saint-Simonian steam; then there are two more letters (which are not letters) in expansion of the project. Take as characteristic the opening of the first letter:

I am no longer young; I have observed and reflected with much activity during the whole of my life, and your happiness has always been the object of my labours: I have conceived a project which, it appears to me, might be useful to you, and I am going to present it to you.

Open a subscription before the tomb of Newton: subscribe all of you, indiscriminately, for the sum you wish.¹

This, it will be agreed, is a somewhat brusque debut for a man of letters, entering into his kingdom at the age of forty-two. The proposal, in what he would have called its ‘crude nudity,’ is that by a system of universal subscriptions and universal election, there should be set apart three mathematicians, three physicists, three physiologists, three writers, three painters and three musicians. The men so elected are to accept no position or employment; they are to be free to make what use they will of their powers, and being thus consecrated and honoured, they will be able to render to humanity the greatest services of which they are capable.

Here, in the Council of Newton, there is, despite its fantastic appearance, a plea that spiritual leadership should be entrusted to the savants. These men are the torches, the flambeaux of humanity, and, as we are assured by another authority, it is of the essence of torches that they should be altruistic:

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves.

Nevertheless humanity does not reward its torches as it should. His battle-cry at this stage is, ‘Down with the Alexanders; long live the Archimedes!’—‘Plus d'honneur pour les Alexandre: vivent les Archimède!’¹ Much of the pamphlet is taken up with appeals to the intellectuals, to the landowners and to the people at large, giving reasons why they should each accept the scheme. The savants are most obviously and directly interested in the success of the subscription. The appeal to the proprietors is based on the fact that they have already lost the battle and that it is in their interest to adopt this measure in order to avoid greater evils. In his appeal to the people at large, Saint-Simon is (as perhaps always) the slightly condescending and benevolent aristocrat. Somewhat patronisingly, he suggests that they should show a becoming gratitude for what has been, or may be, done for them. They should remember that though the proprietors are inferior in numbers, yet they are superior in lumières (a word very dear to Saint-Simon), and that, for the general good, authority should be distributed according to lumières. Or take this, as the basis of an appeal to the man in the street to support the torches with his subscriptions:

On Sundays, eloquence has charms for you; you find pleasure in reading a book well-written, in looking at beautiful pictures or lovely statues, or in listening to music capable of fixing your attention. In order to speak or write in a manner that may entertain you, to make a picture or statue which gives you great pleasure, one must work hard. Is it not just, my friends, that you should reward the artists who fill the intervals of your occupations with pleasures most fitted to develop your intelligence.... Subscribe all of you, my friends....²

All this is rather condescending and even foolish, especially as, apparently, all the contributions are going as a free gift to the twenty-one chosen torches. The idea of popular election in this matter is doubtless somewhat disturbing, but Saint-Simon explains to his proletarian friends what he proposes to do, and counsels them to follow the same procedure: he will ask all his mathematical friends who are the three greatest living mathematicians, and he will be guided by their advice. It is at least an innocent mind that looks forward to a time when the conversation in the taverns of Wapping will range round the comparative merits of Einstein and Max Born as torches. There then, embedded in much that is curious, is Saint-Simon's first suggestion in this problem that so obsesses him. In his own words: ‘the spiritual power in the hands of the savants; the temporal power in the hands of the proprietors; the power of nominating those called to fulfil the functions of leaders in the hands of everyone.’¹

But beyond this, Saint-Simon branches out in this same pamphlet into other matters that bulk largely in the ample brood of sequels. In a vision in which God speaks to him, it is ordained that the Pope, the Cardinals, the Bishops and the priests will henceforth cease to speak in his name; and the reason is that God will always withdraw from the Ministers of his altars ‘the power to speak in my name as soon as they shall have ceased to be more learned (savants) than the flock whom they would lead, and shall have allowed themselves to be dominated by the temporal power.’ Accordingly, and it is God who is speaking in the vision, the religion of Newton is ordained: ‘The Council of Newton will represent me on earth.’ Speaking in large capitals, the Almighty declares that ‘Women shall be allowed to subscribe: they may be elected.’² Detailed instructions are given as to the building of temples and mausolea, and one such instruction gives clear evidence of its divine origin. It is that none of the libraries attached to the temples of Newton shall ever contain more than five hundred volumes.³

The other side of Saint-Simon, that leading to socialism, is also present in embryo in these Geneva letters. Further on (and again large type underlines its significance) God declares that ‘All men shall work’; and in his own comment, on waking up, Saint-Simon says:

The obligation is imposed on each one to give constantly to his personal forces a direction that is useful to humanity; the arms of the poor will continue to nourish the rich, but the rich receives the commandment to make his brain work, and if his brain is not fit to work, he will certainly be obliged to make his arms work; for Newton will assuredly not leave on this planet, one of the nearest to the sun, workers who are wilfully useless in the workshop.¹

The Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva have been surveyed in some detail, because they conveniently present a summary of the lines along which Saint-Simon wrote and speculated for the rest of his life. How far this nonsensical dream of a temple of Newton and of the popular election of ‘torches’ was seriously meant; how far the divine vision was merely a literary exercise, how far the bulk of the pamphlet is blague with a substratum of serious intention, would provide interesting questions for leisurely discussion. The important point is that here we have Saint-Simon groping to establish leadership in a world that does not recognise its leaders; we see him seeking to establish some form of intellectual aristocracy; we have his criticisms of all established religions on the ground that their priests are, by their ignorance in essential matters, no longer qualified to be leaders; and we already have his emphasis on the obligation resting on all to work for the common good, and an expression of that rage which filled him increasingly with the years, whenever he thought of the idlers—les fainéants, les oisifs.

The earlier disciples of Saint-Simon tended to represent him as having passed through a scientific, a political, a moral and a religious phase. This is a rather dangerous over-simplification; for though doubtless his main interest moved in something like the direction indicated, and though, despite much oscillation, his thoughts tended to crystallise on certain points, yet Saint-Simon was not the man to allow his ‘phases’ to be neatly partitioned and docketed. His ultimate aim throughout life was singularly unchanging; it was to reorganise, and indeed (remembering his passion for great things) it was nothing less than to reorganise all knowledge and all science, and all the applications of knowledge and science. The only object worthy of pursuit was to labour for the reorganisation of the system of morale, of the religious and of the political system²; elsewhere he speaks of the urgent and immediate task as being that of finding a solid foundation on which to reconstruct the scientific, the religious arid political edifice. ¹ In his earlier stages, fresh from his academic coaches, it is naturally the reorganisation of scientific knowledge that is his consuming interest; only later did the social and political problem assert its insistence.

Saint-Simon was not a scientist; his recurrent speculations on the possibility of the beaver, as the most intelligent animal, ultimately replacing man is enough to classify him among the attractive amateurs. In any case what he has to say with regard to scientific method falls outside our immediate province. It has, however, an application to the matters with which we are concerned. He is never tired of repeating, with considerable variety of phraseology, that the eighteenth century had been critical, destructive, revolutionary; it was the task of the nineteenth century to be organisatrice, it was time to ‘changer de route’; the discoveries now due to be made could only be achieved by abandoning the a posteriori for the a priori method.² Looking back to the fifteenth century, Saint-Simon also emphasised the continual decline of the theological principle compared with the physicist principle. A modern of the moderns, indeed a man to whom the future alone was of interest, Saint-Simon even in 1813 could say (somewhat prematurely perhaps) that whereas the test of education used to be whether a man ‘possessed’ the Greek and Latin authors, now the question was: ‘Is he strong in the Mathematics?’³ In this general reorganisation and affiliation of all sciences at which Saint-Simon aims, it is essential that all sciences should become positive sciences. The ultimate end then is to give to the ‘science of man’ a positive character, basing it on observation, and treating it by the methods employed in the physical sciences. For is not man, in a phrase to which he recurs, ‘un petit univers’? Moreover this science of man, thus viewed, is to become the chief object of public education.⁴

All this, of course, is more or less Comte, who for a time was proud to sign himself ‘Élève de Henri Saint-Simon.’ The implications of this view are, however, far-reaching, with remote repercussions on Saint-Simon's doctrines regarding politics and government generally. For when politics becomes a positive science, those whose business it is to resolve political problems, if they know their physiology, will look on their difficulties—it comes with rather a shock—as being merely questions in hygiene.⁵ Putting it in more general terms, in the new scheme of things, the questions raised will be eminently ‘positives et jugeables,’ and the decisions given will be the result of scientific demonstrations. Thus as an engineer is supposed to be able to give the answer to a question submitted to him, so will the expert politician, if qualified in his job and trained in the positive ‘science of society’ (the phrase is notable), be able to give the right answer; and infer-entially, all expert politicians, being positive scientists, will give the same answer, which will be capable of scientific demonstration.¹

Thus along one line we are led to government by the expert, without as yet knowing who the expert is. Indeed in a sense we are led to the elimination of government in the traditional and political sense of the word. Reaching forward in anticipation to the Catéchisme Politique des Industriels we find this line of argument leading to a favourite doctrine of Saint-Simon, that society is destined to pass from the régime gouvernemental to the régime administratif.’² This replacement of government by ‘administration’ may at first appear, and indeed it is, a somewhat delusive idea; yet it ought not to be unfamiliar to the present generation. It is surprising to note how frequently arguments are advanced that this or that subject should be ‘taken out of politics.’ Looked at rigorously, it is a somewhat pathetic admission that democracy or parliamentary government is not wholly fitted for its entire task. A generation ago it was a common argument throughout the world that the tariff should be ‘taken out of politics’; in our own day an attempt was made to make the G.P.O. something not quite like an ordinary government office; in its early days the Unemployment Assistance Board (while it was still the U.A.B.) was in intention designed to be something apart from the Minister of Labour, and indeed from anyone else. The whole brood of half-way houses, the Central Electricity Board, the B.B.C., the London Passenger Transport Board, etc., are all attempts to take things ‘out of politics.’ Saint-Simon would have said that they represent the transition from government to administration; they have reached a stage where they are better run administratively, like any other business enterprise, even if in some ways they acknowledge a social responsibility. Saint-Simon is here the prophet of a certain type of Neo-Capitalism, freed from parliamentary criticism because parliamentary criticism is incompetent, yet working primarily for the common good.

Before leaving Saint-Simon's general views on science and knowledge, reference should be made to one further point which colours his outlook in various respects. It relates to his attitude to history and the writing of history. In his eyes, history is a science, and he complains that we have so far no histories written in such a way as to provide the means of inferring what will happen from what has happened.¹ This, with more excuse, was the view of Machiavelli. It is nevertheless a pestilential heresy, and hardly requires refutation. Just because men are unwise and curiously planned, it is never possible to foretell their behaviour, either individually or in the mass. It might, however, be argued that the Machiavellian view of history as the Prophet's Pocket-Guide to the Future ought to be true on Saint-Simonian principles. If, politics having become a positive science, the political expert can always show, with scientific demonstration attached, what is the only possible right answer in every case, this happy result must rest on the fact that human beings are no longer incalculable, but are as amenable to law as the elements hydrogen and nitrogen, assuming that these are still elements. In this case there would be no absurdity in assuming that history provided an unerring basis of prediction. It could then be said of History, as of Wisdom, that she knoweth things of old, and conjectureth aright what is to come. Saint-Simon is logical; his error lies in pressing too far the claims of the science of society to be a ‘positive science.’

There is another historical heresy to which Saint-Simon succumbs. To discover an analogy between the life of the individual and the life of the race is a snare which has beguiled many. That the individual is born, is a child, in process of time—having passed through the seven ages of man—becomes toothless and decrepit, are obvious truths, quite apart from what Shakespeare may have said on the subject. That the human race should pass through corresponding stages is a hypothesis which seems to have fascinated not a few. Saint-Simon swallowed the view whole-heartedly, and pressed the analogies further than most. In the earliest of all our days, to eat is our sole joy and occupation; so with the earliest stages of civilisation of which we have knowledge. Grown somewhat older, the child plays with bricks: the Egyptians erected pyramids. Arrived at puberty, we cultivate the fine arts; at a certain stage we all write poetry, and give way, even if furtively, to music and painting. The Greeks represent this efflorescence of youth. Later we desire to employ our forces, and look upon others as rivals; and the Romans were conquering warriors.² It is, of course, all nonsense; but it is of some importance in studying Saint-Simon, because he had succeeded in persuading himself that humanity, when he wrote, was at an age corresponding to forty in the individual. As a further consequence the race was at the height of its powers, and also it possessed the maximum capacity for ‘jouissances morales de tous les genres.’¹

So far, we have been concerned with Saint-Simon's views on the methods and place of science, and the possibility of a positive science of society as the basis of the great reorganisation of all things which he viewed as his mission. It is time to go back and consider the progressive dissolution of society, as from the fifteenth century, which has made this great task of reconstruction imperative. For this state of affairs, Saint-Simon in diversified language assigns three reasons, which are doubtless interlocked. Firstly, from somewhere about the Reformation, Europe had lost her unity; secondly, the nobility, the temporal power, had lost its usefulness and significance; and thirdly, the same could be said of the clergy, the spiritual power. The old age, in fact, had passed away, leaving no leaders, no guides, no landmarks.

On the first of these points, Saint-Simon has much to say of Luther, who, in his writings, turns up in strange places. We shall presently confront Luther in greater detail as he appears in Le Nouveau Christianisme. For the present, it is sufficient to note that Saint-Simon invariably regards Luther as a disruptive force, as indeed he obviously was. Harmony prevailed from the ninth to the fifteenth century; the spiritual and the temporal powers were in happy equilibrium. Luther dissolved the European Federation; and in particular he broke the bonds which hitherto had linked England to the Continent, making the island insular and launching it on a path of its own.² On the second point, little need be said; from somewhere about the reign of Louis XI, an understanding between the Crown and Industry had deprived the nobility of their significance. They ceased to have any positive importance in the State. Louis XIV reduced them à lui passer sa chemise et à le servir à table.³And indeed what leadership can be expected of a Peerage whose primary purpose is to pass the Prince his purple pyjamas?

It is on the third point, the decay of the influence of the spiritual power, that Saint-Simon is most expansive, not to say reiterative, and most illuminating. In a sense the point had been put with sufficient clarity in the vision incorporated in the Letters from Geneva; briefly, whatever may have been the position in the past, the clergy were now no better—by which, of course, was meant that they had no more lumières—than the laity. They were, therefore, as God had declared in the Vision, no longer fitted to be his representatives—blind mouths, that scarce themselves know how to hold a sheep-hook, as Milton exclaimed in a gorgeous galaxy of mixed metaphor; and—Saint-Simon would have added—lamentably ignorant of the Theory of the Steam Engine.

The authority of the clergy, of any clergy—their power to lead—thus depends on knowledge; and Saint-Simon leaves no doubt as to the kind of knowledge that is requisite. In the golden age before the fifteenth century, when their authority was greatest, the clergy were leaders in the cultivation of the soil and in irrigation; they applied themselves to mathematics and the physical sciences; they established hospitals and were leaders in education. Roger Bacon was a monk: everybody who was anybody in the way of increasing lumières was a monk or a priest. In short, they engaged in ‘useful works.’ And they had their reward in influence and in authority and in other ways. Since then they have declined from their high estate, and the reason is that they no longer ‘laboured in a direction useful to the progress of science.’¹ For the clergy to be useful it must be respected, and that it may be respected it must be not merely ‘savant,’ it must be ‘le corps le plus savant.’² Failing in this respect, its power will pass into the hands of the physicists who surpass them in knowledge. Indeed in any age, leadership in science should be not merely the essential mark of the clergy; it should be the quality that defines them: ‘le clergé doit être le corps scientifique.’³ If anything more emphatic is required, this may serve: ‘Le pouvoir sacerdotal et la capacité scientifique sont identiques dans leur essence.’⁴ The moment the clergy forfeit this qualification, they fall into disesteem, and are in the end replaced by ‘la reunion des hommes les plus savants.’ As against this statement of the Saint-Simonian ideal of what the clergy should be, they have in fact gradually sunk since the fifteenth century until to-day they have become ‘partie de la classe la moins eclairée.’⁵ Saint-Simon did not quote, though he might have done so, the dictum of the prophet to the effect that the priest's lips should keep knowledge.⁶

What, it may be asked, is the nature of this religion for which the Fellows of the Royal Society will act as Chief Priests? Going deeper, who is the God whom they will serve? Clearly, at any age, according to Saint-Simon, religion is merely the sum-total of scientific knowledge, presented, if that be possible, in a sacred form, as revealing the works of God. Moreover, the progress of science has consisted in substituting one cause for many causes, and so far as the enlightened were concerned, this transition had now been completed.¹ There was one universal law, the Law of Gravity. It is curious to observe how the Law of Gravity fascinated the speculators of the time. Fourier, also, put the Law of Gravity in the centre of things, and endeavoured to be a second Newton, extending his law from the material to the spiritual world. For Saint-Simon the acceptance of one law, the Law of Gravity, was to be the foundation of all future philosophy. A new religion, shortly to appear, would also be based on the conception of the universality of one law. His own views, expressed more than once, were not wholly free from a certain suggestion of intellectual dishonesty: there should for a time be two distinct doctrines—Physicism for the instructed classes, and Deism for the ignorant.² It is, however, interesting to note how close to the heart of the future religion the Law of Gravity is placed. He does not exactly say that the Law of Gravity is God; but he comes very near to it. The idea of gravitation, playing the rôle of a general absolute idea, is to replace the idea of God; it is the immutable law by which God governs the universe. The binding link in the conceptions of the learned will in future be, not the idea of ‘God,’ but the idea of gravitation, considered as the Law of God.³ Thus does the Law of Gravity just fall short of replacing God and the Ten Commandments.

For Saint-Simon, the urge to a new orientation of science, a new philosophy, a new religion could not be kept apart from the other aspect of the great problem of the age. Factory and foundry, forge and loom proclaimed that this was a new age, an industrial age in which France was assuming the similitude of a workshop, in which all men were jostling together, partners at the same bench. The industrial age, into which humanity had been projected, had two characteristics at least; firstly, there must be perfect equality, though this, in the Saint-Simonian world, is interpreted as equality of opportunity; and secondly, all privileges, in particular all privileges of birth, must be abolished. Perhaps there should be added (for it was never absent from Saint-Simon's mind) the further consideration that the world was now no place for idlers. This new world had, however, the wrong kind of government: there was a maladjustment between the government and the world it was supposed to govern. Surely it was an offence to see the ‘nation travaillante dirigée, et, qui pis est, gouvernée par la nation fainéante et incapable.’¹ In more general terms France presented the extraordinary spectacle of a country which was essentially industrial, and of which the government was nevertheless essentially feudal.²

This question obsessed Saint-Simon throughout his life, and in a plethora of pamphlets and catechisms he outlined a multitude of varying solutions, in very varying degrees of detail. He rung the changes on the industriels, the artistes, and the savants, now advancing, now degrading one or other of the possible claimants. It would be an interesting, though probably an unprofitable task, to plot through time the variations in the Saint-Simonian solution. Perhaps the most elaborate, certainly the most detailed, of his many solutions is that contained in the Organisateur, where the curious will find outlined a somewhat fearsome constitution, resting on three chambers, a chambre d'invention, a chambre d'examen, and a chambre d'exécution. The chambre d'invention is to comprise 200 engineers, 50 poets ‘or other inventors in literature,’ 25 painters, 15 sculptors or architects, and 10 musicians. Here indeed is Technocracy, and in a world panting for exploitation this solid phalanx of engineers will be able to circumvent the efforts of this medley collection of poets, musicians and others. Doubtless it will be easier to get 200 qualified engineers than 50 certificated poets. The chambre d'examen is less motley: it will be constituted by 100 biologists, 100 physicists and 100 mathematicians. The chambre d'exécution is to be drawn from all the branches of industry. After the lapse of more than a century, constitution-mongering on these lines can bring but a wan and faded smile to the lips of the reader.³

One interesting interlude in this long story of reshuffling the industriels and the savants is represented by what may be called his parliamentary phase. Round about the time of the fall of Napoleon, Saint-Simon became for a brief period an enthusiastic admirer of the British Parliamentary system, and a zealous advocate of its propagation throughout Europe.⁴ In each country the old organisation is to be replaced by a Parliamentary government, recognising the supremacy of a general parliament placed above them. In its complete development there will be an international House of Lords, and indeed what he calls ‘le roi du parlement européen,’—a post so ticklish to fill that Saint-Simon showed uncommon sense in postponing detailed discussion to a later work. Not the least interesting aspect of this curious phase in Saint-Simon's pilgrimage is the zeal with which he pleads for a union of England and France, in order to avoid on both sides greater evils to come; it will not merely be a nucleus of the European parliament; this first step will inevitably impel other countries to link up with them.

This sudden enthusiasm for the machinery of Parliamentary government is, however, but a passing phase, induced by the urgency of political occurrences. It has been said above that Saint-Simon shuffles and re-shuffles his industriels, his savants and his artistes in varying combinations. While this is true, it is not wholly true, or at least is not the whole truth. Increasingly, as he grew older, Saint-Simon laid greater emphasis on one of the possible candidates for authority in the new age. In an industrial age, the important class was clearly les industriels; and it was therefore the industriels who should be in control. Over long stretches, the writings of Saint-Simon resolve themselves into a most extravagant hymn of praise in honour of les industriels, the men who do things and get things done. No organ of the opposition ever clamoured more insistently for a ‘business government.’ Open Saint-Simon's later works anywhere, and the chances are that you will be within a few pages of some reinforcement of this, his dearest theme. The intelligent reader may wish to know who is an industriel; for, left in the vague, he is as much clouded in ambiguity as his frequent companion in the pages of Saint-Simon, le savant. In the first question and answer of the Catéchisme Politique des Industriels Saint-Simon gave a lengthy and comprehensive definition which must here suffer abridgement. An industrial, we are told, is one who labours to produce, or place within the reach of the members of society, one or several means of satisfying their needs or their physical tastes. Thus a farmer who sows corn or raises stock is an industriel A wheelwright, a farrier, a locksmith are all industriels; a manufacturer of shoes, of hats, of cloth is an industriel. A merchant, a carter, a sailor on a merchant vessel are all industriels. Industrials fall into three great classes: agriculturalists, manufacturers and merchants. Thus Saint-Simon, almost trembling on the brink of an attempted definition of productive labour.¹

For Saint-Simon's views on the ineffable merits and the supreme importance of the industrial class, and its consequent sole competence to govern, reference may be made to three publications, ignoring many illuminating comments elsewhere. In his Vues sur la Propriété et la Législation (1818), the motto already sounds the appropriate note: ‘tout par l'industrie; tout pour elle.’ In the Preface the reader is told among other things that ‘the industrial class is the sole useful class’; and further that all laws and administrative measures must be judged by one test only, namely whether they are useful or harmful to industry.¹ In the course of the argument he claims that industry ‘s'est emparée de tout’—it has laid its hands on everything.² It has taken over even war; and with a singularly modern note, he points out that in modern warfare (1818), the armies have been reduced to a subordinate position. They merely apply the products of industry; and, apart from complete incapacity on the part of the generals, the army which is best looked after by industry will win. In summing up at the end of these Vues, he expresses himself thus, with much more to the same effect:

The only class in society whose ambition and political courage we should like to see increased, the only one in which this ambition could be useful and in which this courage is necessary, is, in general, the class of the industrials; for their particular interests are in perfect harmony with the common interest, by the mere force of circumstances. It is because we realise this truth that we have zealously embraced the cause of the industrials, looking upon them as the true centre and hearth-stone of civilisation.³

A considerable extrinsic interest attaches to the Parabole de Saint-Simon⁴ (1819), which, it was suggested, instigated a murder, and which certainly led to a prosecution, happily unsuccessful. It also had as sequelæ a series of letters to the jury, providing them with gratuitous instruction in Saint-Simonian principles. In its form it is one of the most peculiar and fantastic of Saint-Simon's writings. It is but a diminutive opusculum, extending to a mere five pages in Hubbard's edition. ‘We suppose,’ he begins with characteristic abruptness—‘we suppose that France suddenly loses her fifty leading physicists, her fifty leading chemists, her fifty leading physiologists, her fifty leading mathematicians, her fifty leading...’ After a time he pauses for a semi-colon and a breath, and resumes a new paragraph: ‘her fifty leading mechanics, her fifty leading engineers civil and military, her fifty leading...’ In due course there is another semi-colon, and the next paragraph opens with ‘the fifty leading bankers...’ The eye of the reader skims down the lines and over the page, on which every fifth or sixth word is ‘cinquante,’ until finally he finds refuge in the peaceful haven of a full stop. There they are, the three thousand leading ‘savans, artistes et artisans de France.’ The result of their loss? These men are the most useful to their country; France would become a body without a soul in the moment of their disappearance. It would require at least a generation to repair the disaster.

Let us pass, says Saint-Simon, to another supposition—and the heart of the reader sinks within him, Now, however, he assumes the loss of a few individuals, or of large battalions in place of the niggling instalments of fifties, so that the tale of destruction is compressed. Suppose that instead of losing all these leaders in the arts and the sciences, France were to lose Mr the Brother of the King, the duc de Berry, and a few odd specified Duchesses; all the officers of the Crown and Ministers of State, all Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops and such like; all judges and the ten thousand wealthiest proprietors among those ‘who live nobly’—thirty thousand in all.

Such a thinning of the ranks of Who's Who would certainly grieve the French people, ‘parce qu'ils sont bons.’ The loss would, however, be a purely sentimental one; there would result no evil to the State. There are quite a number of Frenchmen capable of discharging the functions of the brother of the King; there are no lack of soldiers as good as our field-marshals. There are barristers quite willing to take the place of our judges, curés ready to step into the shoes of the bishops. To this odd Parabole Saint-Simon adds a few comments, marked by a certain bitterness to which he is ordinarily a stranger. These thirty thousand men are not merely neutral; they are positively injurious to the progress of the sciences and the arts, which is alone what matters. They are injurious in perpetuating an outworn way of looking at things; they are injurious in depriving the true leaders of society of their rightful place; they are injurious in using their means in the wrong way and in diverting the resources of the nation into wrong channels. The present state of society is the world upside down—le monde renversé. The final words are almost like an echo of the concluding paragraph of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality. Everywhere, says Saint-Simon, the incompetent are put in charge of the competent; the most immoral are called to fashion the citizens in virtue; the great criminals are appointed to punish the shortcomings of the petty delinquents. Saint-Simon was seldom so inflammatory: it was unfortunate that one of the thirty thousand, whom he had specified by name, the duc de Berry, should have been assassinated within three months of the appearance of the Parabole.

The third of the writings of Saint-Simon to which it is proposed to refer on this question of the world upside down, as evidenced in the lack of respect paid to the industrial class, is the Catéchisme Politique des Industriels. A catechism is, on the whole, an unsatisfactory vehicle for propaganda, partly because of a certain infantile atmosphere which almost inevitably pervades the discussion, and partly because the Questioner and the Instructor always seem to be in undesired collusion. Certainly Saint-Simon's questioner invariably asks the right question, and indeed from time to time provides most useful summaries of what he has been told. The purpose of the Catechism is to prove the superiority of the industrial class over all others; to show why they have hitherto failed to attain the position due to their merits; to sow in their hearts the seeds of discontent, and to show the means whereby they may gain their rightful rank and influence. It is a discussion overflowing with history and comparative politics. After defining what is an industrial in terms already summarised, the Catechism proceeds:

Q. What rank should the industrials occupy in society?

A. The industrial class should occupy the first rank, because it is the most important of all; because it can do without the others, and none of the others can do without it; because it exists by its own forces, by its personal labours. The other classes ought to Work for it, because they are its creatures, and because it maintains their existence; in a word, everything being done by industry, everything should be done for it. (Tout se faisant par l'industrie, tout doit se faire pour elle.)

Q. What rank do the industrials occupy in society?

A. The industrial class, in the present social organisation, is constituted the last of all. The social order still accords more consideration to secondary works and even to idleness than to the most important labours and those of the most urgent usefulness.¹

A little later, though still in the early stages of the Catechism, we are given a summary statement of the reasons which make the industrial class fitted to govern:

The reason is simple: the political inclination of the vast majority of society is to be governed as cheaply as possible; to be governed as little as possible; to be governed by the most capable men, and in a manner which will completely assure public tranquillity. Now the only means of satisfying, in these various respects, the desires of the majority, consists in entrusting to the most important industrials the task of directing the public fortune; for the most important industrials are most interested in the maintenance of tranquility; they are most interested in economy in public expenditure; they are most interested in restricting arbitrary power; lastly, of all members of society, it is they who have given proof of the greatest capacity in positive administration, the success which they have achieved in their various enterprises having given evidence of their capacity in this respect.²

That the industrials alone are interested in economy, that they alone have given proof of capacity, that they least of all desire to meddle for the sake of meddling—these reasons for the supremacy of the industrial class are the constant theme of Saint-Simon's reiterations; but above all, merely because this is an industrial age, it is a chose monstrueuse that the direction of affairs should be elsewhere than in the hands of the industrials.³ The industrials have hitherto been denied their rightful place, because they have not been conscious of the superiority of their class. They have shown excessive prudence and insufficient firmness: they have, in other words, been too busy with their own affairs. Also they have themselves desired to rise, to become barons, or to marry their daughters into the aristocracy—anxious, in a fine phrase, to associate themselves with the débris de la féodalité. But now the industrialists must ally themselves with the Monarchy against the nobility. There must be formed the parti industriel; the Industrial Monarchy will be established, with the King proud of being the ‘first industrialist.’¹

In this future industrial state, two questions arise which are of considerable significance, alike in the later Saint-Simon and in the Saint-Simonian school after his death. The first relates to the end and functions of government; the second to the place of property in the scheme of things. A few words on each may complete this side of the picture.

It is one of the complaints of Saint-Simon that the purpose of the association of citizens, making up the nation, has never been adequately defined.² In the simile of two caravans, which at one time enjoyed a certain celebrity, he contrasted the position of one in which the instruction to the conductors was, ‘Take us to the place where it will be best for us to go,’ and the other in which the conductors were told, ‘You know the way to Mecca; take us there.’³ In the first, the conductors are everything; the caravan counts for nothing. In the second, the conductors are mere guides, discharging subordinate and controllable functions. In the same way, although clearly the analogy must not be examined too curiously, it is not enough to say that government should be in the interests of the governed and for their well-being. Such a statement is too vague and requires content. As made more precise by Saint-Simon, the sole and permanent object of the social organisation is to apply, for the satisfaction of the needs of man, all the knowledge acquired in the sciences and the fine arts, and in the arts and crafts, and to propagate, increase and perfect this body of knowledge as far as possible.⁴ Here is a utilitarian government in the strictest sense; and in his later years this conception of the State came more easily to Saint-Simon, because he entertained the agreeable belief that the last shot had been fired at Waterloo, and that henceforward there would be but the rivalries of peace. In practice, however, throughout his many schemes of government, it is curious to note how consistently Saint-Simon conceived the task of government as being primarily that of preparing a projet de travaux, a plan of public works, partly to provide employment, but more fundamentally because this represents the task of civilisation and of the industrial age.⁵ Later this was to become the ‘exploitation of the globe by association.’ In that fantastic outline of a super-European Parliament, to which reference has already been made, the primary function of this new creature was to carry out enterprises of general usefulness for the society of Europe, linking the Danube and the Rhine, the Rhine and the Baltic, peopling the globe with the European race and breaking the world in for the use of Europe. In short, however he might define it, for Saint-Simon the primary function of government was the preparation of projects of public works—preferably of a grandiose character.

The general question of the legitimacy of property and the limits of its use was destined to become a crucial point in the transition from Saint-Simon to the Saint-Simonians. Saint-Simon's position, to say the least, is hesitant and ambiguous and invited criticism. Probably it was an issue on which the descendant of Charlemagne had difficulty in coming to terms with the ancestor of a long line of socialists. Nowhere does he suggest any definitive restriction on property or on the use of property. The legislature, he says in one place, must assure the free exercise of property.¹ In his Vues sur la Propriété et la Législation, while he does not suggest changes in property rights, he gets as far as suggesting the possibility and the legitimacy of such changes. He remarks (and in Saint-Simon it is somewhat surprising) that the law which constitutes the form of government is less important, and less influential on the happiness of nations, than the law defining the exercise of property. Property is the real foundation of the social edifice. The right of property must therefore be founded in such a manner as to be most favourable to the increase of wealth.² From the fact that this law is fundamental, it must not, however, be assumed that it cannot be modified. As the point subsequently becomes of primary importance in the Saint-Simonian tradition, the crucial sentence of the Master may be quoted:

It is therefore evident that in every country, the fundamental law is that which establishes property and the provisions necessary to secure that it is respected; but from the fact that this law is fundamental, it does not follow that it cannot be modified. What is necessary is a law which establishes the right of property—not a law which establishes it in such and such a manner. It is on the conservation of the right of property that the existence of society depends; but not on the conservation of the law which originally consecrated that right.³

Further, the individual right of property can be founded only on the general utility which springs from the exercise of this right, and this utility may vary from time to time.

This amounts to saying that the institution of property must justify itself on public grounds; but such a conclusion has all the vagueness which characterised the caravan travelling to an unknown destination. When he ought to say something more precise, Saint-Simon is as uncommunicative as a Parliamentary Under Secretary left stranded by his chief. In one place he says that the moralist ought to urge public opinion to punish the idle proprietor by depriving him of all ‘consideration.’¹ Elsewhere, approaching the question from the positive rather than the negative side, he says that property ought to be so constituted as to stimulate the proprietor to make it as productive as possible.² Towards this laudable end, Saint-Simon contributed as best he might by invariably holding up the idler to contempt; at the thought of les oisifs and les fainéants, he gives way to ungovernable rage. A rentier who does nothing is a burden on society, even if he be an alms-giver.³ ‘Rentiers,’ he exclaims, ‘classe encore plus sotte et plus méprisable, qui cherche dans la vie des jouissances obtenues sans travail.’⁴ For Saint-Simon the first law of morality and the first law of religion was that ‘Man must work.’⁵ The teaching of Saint-Simon on property may then, not unjustly, be summarised as implying that property was not, at least for the present, to be disturbed; but that, secondly, under the pressure of public opinion, the owner of wealth must be made to feel that he has responsibilities and that he must not, in any case, shelter behind his wealth in order to enjoy a life of ease. Whether this is a logical or satisfactory position need not be debated; it is not, however, substantially different from the views of St. Thomas Aquinas, on the one hand, or of Charles Kingsley, representing the Christian socialists, on the other.

In the foregoing pages, all reference to Saint-Simon's last work, Nouveau Christianisme, has been rigorously and intentionally avoided. The early commentators and biographers, such as they were, seem to be agreed (perhaps not with complete justification) that this dialogue stands apart from the rest of his writings, and that it is here that he comes nearest to that socialism of which he is one of the many reputed fathers. In a sense, Nouveau Christianisme is a fragment, designed to be completed in two further dialogues; but even had he lived, Saint-Simon having been Saint-Simon, there is no guarantee that they would have been written.

Though in fact Saint-Simon continues to embroider the old themes in this, his last work, and though, in many respects, he continues to repeat what he has already repeated, there is undeniably an indefinable quality about Nouveau Christianisme which explains the position of honour frequently assigned to it. In the socialist tradition it has been the most influential of his writings. It is the least marred by Saint-Simonian eccentricities. Though in form a dialogue between a Conservateur and a Novateur, the Conservateur agreeably fades away, so that the reader forgets his presence. Here also Saint-Simon, in his zeal for humanity, seems somewhat to have shed the patronising airs which elsewhere cling to the grand seigneur.

Throughout his life Saint-Simon had preached the need for a new religion. In the Travail sur la Gravitation Universelle, he had already said that the Christian religion, after rendering great services, had fulfilled its missions and completed its usefulness.¹ Is it possible to restate the essence of Christianity, in accordance with the needs of the new industrial age? Such, briefly, is the theme of Saint-Simon's last testament. In approaching this question, probably as a concession to the Conservateur, Saint-Simon (who may be identified with the Novateur) admits that what God personally has said cannot be perfected or restated; but this must be distinguished from what the clergy said in his name. This constitutes a science capable of improvement like any other science.² If the human element (what the clergy have said) is abstracted, there remains but one principle representing the divine element in Christianity. It is the injunction that men should behave to each other as brothers. This and this alone is the essence of Christianity, and Saint-Simon deduces from it, in more lengthy phraseology which recurs like a Leitmotiv, the essential doctrine of the New Christianity. It is that men

should organise their society in the manner most advantageous to the largest number; they should propose, as the end to be aimed at in all their works and in all their actions, to ameliorate as promptly and as completely as possible the moral and physical existence of the most numerous class.³

La class la plus nombreuse—this swarming multitude! Hitherto, they have been crowded at the back of the stage; from time to time they have been heard ‘off.’ Is this the first time they have been thrust into the spotlight, and their condition and well-being made the primary, indeed the sole, end of every political and social institution, and of all political and social activity? For this also, be it observed, should be the end of religion—of all religion and of any religion⁴: ‘Religion should direct society towards the great aim of the most rapid amelioration of the lot of the poorest class.’

Such is the sum and substance of Nouveau Christianisme; but in the remainder, which is largely a criticism of Roman Catholicism and of Protestantism, there is much that throws light on Saint-Simon. The Catholic religion, he argues, is but a Christian heresy. The clergy (his old theme) should be capable of directing their flocks in works designed to increase their bien-être: they obviously are not. They should preach the possibility of ‘amelioration’—that blessed word: they simply do not have the necessary ‘connaissances.’ The ecclesiastical estates are badly administered; and much more.¹

He is more interesting in his criticisms of Protestantism, above all as embodied in Luther. Luther made quite a number of mistakes. Saint-Simon gives a lengthy speech which Luther ought to have addressed to the Pope, initiating him into the cream of Saint-Simonian ideas. Luther should have said that the theory of Christianity had been sufficiently perfected: it was now time to turn to application. True Christianity should make men happy not merely in Heaven, but here on this earth. He should also have told the Pope—though it would have been something of an anachronism if he had—that Christianity no longer recognised the right of one man to command another, and that Royalty was an institution designed to prevent the rich and the powerful from oppressing the poor. He should also have urged on a very astonished Pope the importance of a large plan of public works, making it clear that the only way of gaining eternal life was by labouring to increase the well-being of the human race.²

A further criticism of Luther is also of interest in revealing Saint-Simon. It is that Luther reduced religion to preaching. In doing so, il a prosaïqué, he reduced to prose the body of Christian sentiments.³ The poet ought to support the preacher; the musician, the painter, the sculptor should surround him: but all this side of life Luther banished from the temple. And lastly, in this incomplete summary, Luther erred in regarding Christianity as perfect in its origin, and as having deteriorated ever since. He urged his followers to study Christianity as expounded in the books written when it was founded, above all in the Bible; just as well might a chemist or a mathematician claim that their sciences would be best studied in the earliest known works on the subject. As a consequence of this odd error on the part of Luther, there are even now Bible Societies, distributing millions of copies of the Bible among the public!⁴

Doubtless from the point of view of theology and religion, Nouveau Christianisme cannot be regarded as a weighty contribution. It may be doubted whether what it preaches is a religion at all. It is a gospel of material betterment, of increased power over nature directed to the increase of human happiness, and of happiness here and now, and not merely in some shadowy future existence. Perhaps its significance does not even lie in its proclamation of universal brotherhood—doubtless a noble sentiment, but apt to be swamped in foam and froth. If all the world is my brother, Proudhon remarked later, then I have no brother. But that the whole machinery of society and of the State exists in order to care for la classe la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre—there was an idea worth launching on the world.¹

It is now possible to assess the legacy of Saint-Simon when he died in 1825, and to consider his position in the socialist succession. He began, as has been seen, very largely as a critic of scientific method, looking forward to the development of a positive science of society. In this respect he is a forerunner of Comte. He was concerned with the creation of a spiritual power and of a new religion fitted to the needs of the new industrial age. In emphasising the characteristics of this new age, he was led to extol the virtues of the industrial classes, and became the prophet of big business, even if of big business with a sense of social responsibility. In all this, there is little of socialism as ordinarily understood; and it may be forcibly suggested that Saint-Simon's claims to be one of the fathers of socialism rest on very slender evidence of paternity. Even on a generous interpretation of the essentials of socialism, the distinctly socialistic elements in Saint-Simon are minimal. He saw that in this new world there must be perfect equality, in the sense of equality of opportunity; or, putting it from another angle, that all privileges must be abolished. Also he saw that in this new world there would be no room for the idler, though he never faced up to the question of how the congenital idler can be made to work. In his last book, he asserted the claims of the masses—the most numerous and the poorest class—to be the particular care of the State; and whatever other functions government might have, he was never in doubt that it had to provide work and education. On property, that thorniest of questions in socialist theory, he spoke with an uncertain voice: it was to be respected, but the owner had to be educated, or compelled by public opinion, to use his wealth for the public good. Beyond these few points, it is difficult to squeeze another drop even of the most diluted socialism out of Saint-Simon.

How then does it happen that he is invariably classed among the founders of socialism? The answer probably is that in some ways he began to live after his death. The Saint-Simonians, whose history represents one of the most fantastic tales of human freakishness, took over part of his theories, and by certain apparently slight but far-reaching modifications in his doctrine, linked Saint-Simon to the main line of socialist development. But the Saint-Simonian school is sufficiently apart from Saint-Simon to merit the compliment of a separate sub-section.¹

(b) THE SAINT-SIMONIANS

Let no one flatter himself that he is dead, merely because he has been buried. Scarcely had the curtain fallen on the tempestuous life of Saint-Simon, when it was rung up again on what may, without harshness, be called the fantastic farce of the Saint-Simonian Church. Saint-Simon had had but little influence and but few faithful followers in his lifetime. Thierry and Comte, sufficiently distinguished disciples for anyone, had moved elsewhere. There is a significant admission in the introduction to the Doctrine de Saint-Simon, to the effect that Saint-Simon had left ‘un très-petit nombre d'élèves,’ and that his doctrine had been studied scientifically by ‘très-peu de personnes.’ The true heir to Saint-Simon, the follower nearest to him in the last few years and at his death, was Olinde Rodrigues; and with filial piety he sought to bring together a company of disciples to carry on the master's work. The history of the Saint-Simonian movement becomes forthwith a whirl of lectures, conferences, newspapers, with a surprisingly large influx of recruits. Rodrigues was soon displaced in the leadership by Enfantin and Bazard. It was probably Bazard who supplied the brains and the ideas, while Enfantin gave the movement its bizarre elements. With the increase of disciples there emerged a sacred college of apostles. By this time there was professedly a Saint-Simonian religion and a Saint-Simonian Church, with six departmental churches throughout France. With true missionary zeal the Church carried its gospel abroad. The curious burrower in libraries may find pamphlets revealing that the chief of the Saint-Simonian religion in England in 1833 was a certain Fontana, and that the preacher of the movement was called Prati. The names hardly suggest that the new religion had had time to attract the indigenous elements.²

The roots of the Saint-Simonian religion may not unnaturally be found in Saint-Simon. One of the best known passages in Saint-Simon is that in which he chides the imagination of the poets for placing the age of gold in the cradle of the human race—in the Garden of Eden, in the symbolism of the Old Testament: ‘The age of gold of the human race is not behind us; it lies ahead of us; it consists in the perfection of the social order. Our fathers have not seen it; our children will arrive there one day; it is for us to mark the path.’¹ This amounts to a repudiation of the doctrine of the fall of man and of all its implications. We have always been rising; we are rising now; we shall continue to rise. This is the Law of Progress. Infuse with this the spirit of The New Christianity, and it may be deduced that the true religion consists in working for the betterment of men here and now. Science is holy, and industry is holy; for these are the instruments of human betterment.² This, in so far as it is a religion, is a secular religion in which the emphasis is laid on work and service in the interests of the general welfare of humanity.

One other point follows from the repudiation of the doctrine of the Fall. If man has not fallen, there is no angry God to be appeased; and there is accordingly no particular reason why we should not find happiness, perhaps even pleasure, in life. The problem of the dualism of spirit and flesh had been much in Saint-Simon's mind; in his followers, in the Saint-Simonian religion, this line of development led to one of their most famous catchwords. They believed in ‘the rehabilitation of the flesh’; the flesh should be no longer mortified and crucified, but should have its claims recognised. And indeed why should we labour for the happiness of mankind, if mankind are not prepared to be happy?

It was, however, over the question of women that the Saint-Simonian Church, like so many other gallant adventures, finally came to grief. Apart from the statement in the Letters from Geneva, that women were to be allowed to contribute to the support of the Council of Newton, Saint-Simon had been extraordinarily discreet on the question of women, at least in his writings. Moreover, if one wishes to be pedantically precise, it may be recalled that this particular statement was made by the Deity and not by Saint-Simon. His followers, however, showed less discretion; and presently the question of women became the chief bone of contention in the infant Church. They proclaimed, as one of their leading principles, the ‘emancipation of woman.’ Now there may be much to be said for the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh’; there doubtless always has been, and always will be, much to be said for the ‘emancipation of woman.’ But, given the infinite possibility of human misunderstanding, they are principles which, if only for prudential reasons, ought not to be brought into too close contiguity, especially by an Enfantin.

It is difficult at this distance of time to decide whether Enfantin was a complete charlatan or a sincere but temporarily unbalanced religious enthusiast. It was perhaps permissible to glorify Saint-Simon; after all, he was not merely dead, but he was the presumed founder of the presumed religion. Even so, it seems to be going rather far to assign him ‘un rang plus élevé que le fils de Dieu,¹ or to summarise history tersely in the statement that ‘Moïse a promis aux hommes la fraternité universelle; Jésus-Christ l'a préparée; Saint-Simon la réalise.’²

But Enfantin, being still alive, was in a different case; yet he encouraged in his followers an extravagance of language which far exceeds the bounds of the ludicrous. Fortunately, he retained just enough sense to assure them that he was not God. His influence over his disciples was unlimited and somewhat uncanny. He dressed them in absurd garments of varying shades of blue to denote different grades in the hierarchy, and devised a wonderful symbolic waistcoat, which no one could put on or off without the assistance of one of his fellows, thereby impressing the useful lesson of our mutual dependence on each other. The same lesson had been taught in The Wealth of Nations on less picturesque lines. He led his followers into monastic retreat, where, to the disgust of their abandoned wives, they vied with each other in the length of beard they could produce during their period of celibacy. In short, the Saint-Simonian Church under Enfantin became a pantomime, one of the gratuitous entertainments of Paris, almost the song of the drunkards.

In addition to proclaiming the emancipation of women, Enfantin also discovered that the social unit in future was to be, not man, or woman, but man plus woman—a discovery with curious theological repercussions. Whether his teaching on woman and marriage was or was not immoral, is neither here nor there. What is important is that it was generally assumed to be so; and Bazard, the most intelligent of the Saint-Simonians, shared this view. His withdrawal from the Church on this issue led to the great schism. It also led to his ceremonial chair being vacated; for Bazard and Enfantin, as the leaders, had hitherto enjoyed no ordinary chairs. The chair continued to be left vacant; for if Enfantin was Le Père, clearly the other chair should be reserved for La Mère—but where was she? If we are to pursue our emancipation of women to a logical conclusion, it is clear that God must manifest himself in a female as well as in a male form. Indeed, if one is not careful—and the Saint-Simonians were not—the next question that comes up for discussion is that of the sex of God, who obviously ought not to show any partiality in these matters by being one or the other. The vacant chair thus remained as the symbol of the female Messiah who would one day come, and without whose help Enfantin felt his efficiency impaired. In the end Enfantin was prosecuted, along with certain of his followers, partly for teaching immoral doctrine and partly for convening illegal meetings. The trial was a supremely successful show, and even to-day it is possible to read a few pages at a time (here and there) of the volume in which the Saint-Simonians embalmed, for the instruction of posterity, a verbatim report of the proceedings. Enfantin and two others were condemned to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 100 francs. The movement never really recovered from this blow. Meanwhile, the bulk of his followers, having satisfied themselves in some way that the female Messiah was to be found on the banks of the Nile, proceeded to Egypt in order to summon her to fill the vacant chair. They did not find her; but they stayed on to help in the construction of dams. Not the least amazing feature of this fantastic story is that, after the Saint-Simonian Church as an organisation had faded out, almost without exception the leading Saint-Simonians, including Enfantin himself, moved into what Marshall would have called ‘the ordinary business of life.’ There they succeeded in showing that their youthful eccentricities in no way debarred them from distinguishing themselves in this competitive world. Indeed most of them were amazingly, almost disgustingly, successful. Above all in banking, in engineering and in railway administration, France in the next generation owed an enormous debt to the scattered remnants of the Saint-Simonian Church.

That a successful banker or railway magnate may in his youth have sought for the female Messiah on the banks of the Nile is a startling thought, doubtless calculated to provoke edifying commentaries on the unsearchableness of Man. This curious tale has, however, been glanced at with a different object in view. Saint-Simon and his enormous influence can be understood only if we appreciate the nature of the Saint-Simonian school, which just fell short of transforming their neglected master into a god, and which, though mixing much tinsel, if not dross, with their efforts, nevertheless succeeded in making Saint-Simon one of the great influences of the nineteenth century.

For us the essential point to disentangle is the process whereby the Saint-Simonians transformed the rather tepid, hesitant and attenuated socialism of their Master into a socialism which in places is as aggressive as that of Marx or Proudhon. Let no one seek to master Saint-Simonian literature. The Saint-Simonians were a numerous company of men, and of young men at that, who talked and preached incessantly, and who seem to have printed all that they said. Anyone who allows himself to be sucked into this whirlpool will never emerge again. Fortunately, the essentials of the Saint-Simonian school and of its modification of Saint-Simon can be obtained conveniently in the so-called Doctrine de Saint-Simon: Exposition, Première Année (1829). This dates from the period of expansion of the Saint-Simonian school when life, as in the days of the early Fabians, was a long vista of uninterrupted conferences, across which the female Messiah had not yet cast her baleful shadow.

In the first place, the Doctrine is somewhat more specific than Saint-Simon had been with regard to the direction in which humanity is marching; or if this statement may seem to do injustice to Saint-Simon, a man ever looking to the future, we may say that his followers sought to give precision and currency to Saint-Simon's ideas by the reiterated use of certain catchwords—the secret of all successful propaganda. The past had represented the ‘exploitation of man by man,’ as in war and otherwise; this is to be replaced by the harmonious action of man on nature. Humanity is gravitating to ‘universal association.’ This universal association, moreover, is to be given a ‘pacific direction.’ The love of the works of peace has already succeeded ‘the ardour of combat.’¹ Under the influence of Christianity, the activity of mankind has been directed to the ‘exploitation of the globe.’² With a rather pathetic optimism, it is asserted that the contrast between the past and the future, already described as the contrast between the exploitation of man by man and the exploitation of nature by man, may also be summed up still more briefly as the contrast between war and peace.³ Even the character of our wars is changing: there are no longer wars of destruction and pillage, nor even for territorial possessions.⁴ Such was the confiding and innocent faith of 1829. There then we have one of the most familiar catch-phrases of the Saint-Simonians: the human race is to become one—united in the ‘exploitation of the globe by association.’

Meanwhile, how are we equipped for this great task of exploitation? The Saint-Simonians would have answered: ‘Very badly.’ They agreed with Saint-Simon that each science works on its own; and even if there be academies, ‘nulle grande vue n'harmonise leurs travaux.’⁵ But indeed what is wrong everywhere is precisely that there is ‘nulle grande vue.’ Saint-Simon had been apt to grovel before big business and industry, as the only homes of efficiency and competence; his followers, turning to industry, found that here also there was evidence of disorder. Here also everything was turned over to the uncertain chances of lumières individuelles. Once more it is a world of isolated efforts, in which, as often as not, management falls into incompetent hands.¹ This is the result of laissez faire, which assumes—quite fallaciously—that personal interest will always be in harmony with the general interest. Laissez faire means that a few happy people triumph—but at the cost of the complete ruin of countless victims. If we are to have the best use of property and of the machinery of production, these must be entrusted to the most competent hands—aux mains les plus habiles. But what in fact happens? The accident of birth distributes resources blindly, and if the proprietor is incompetent, or elects to be an oisif there is no remedy.²

We have reached the crux of the School's modification of the teaching of the Master. Things cannot be right, so long as the mere chance of birth, operating through the law of inheritance, distributes resources blindly throughout society. In such a world there can be no equality of opportunity, which is the only equality that matters: the competitors do not start fair. For though the Saint-Simonians have conceded that the exploitation of man by man is the mark of the past, in contrast with the association of all men which will prevail in the future, it must not be imagined that exploitation has ceased. It remains—and here the Saint-Simonians stretch out a hand to the Marxians—in the relationship of master and wage-earner, the last transformation that the system of slavery has undergone. The worker is indeed the descendant of the serf. The transaction between master and servant is not a free one. The worker, whose daily sustenance depends on the previous day's work, may exist only on conditions imposed upon him by a small group whom the law has invested with a monopoly of wealth, and to whom it has given the power, even while living in idleness, to dispose of the instruments of production. Consequently the worker is exploited materially, in-, tellectually and morally. Only one revolution remains to be accomplished—that, namely, which will put an end to this exploitation, completely and in all its forms.³ This is the language of Marx, rather than of the aristocratic Saint-Simon.

The remedy lies in a revision of our ideas regarding property. For even if property be regarded as the basis of the political order, the law regulating property is, nevertheless, subject to modification.⁴ Property, inasmuch as it enables some men to live in idleness, must be changed. It has become—and it is Proudhon speaking out of due season—‘the privilege of imposing a levy on the labour of others,’ le privilége de lever une prime sur le travail d'autrui.⁵ The obvious solution is of astonishing simplicity, though its repercussions are far-reaching. The evil springs from the fact that by inheritance wealth is handed on within the family.⁶ It is therefore only necessary to abolish inheritance and transfer to the State, ‘devenu Association des travailleurs,’ the right of succession. It is carefully explained that this does not mean community of goods; nor does it mean equality. It does mean that the privileges of birth will at last be completely extirpated, and that henceforth capacity and work will be the sole titles to wealth.¹

It will be seen how the Saint-Simonians, by an apparently slight alteration of the Saint-Simonian structure, have given the whole of the Master's doctrine an entirely revolutionary significance. Saint-Simon had asserted that equality was to be the mark of the new industrial age: he was right. In consequence, he proclaimed the abolition of all privileges: he did well. But on the question of property and the greatest of all privileges which is to be found in inheritance, the trumpet had given forth a very uncertain sound. In essence, the Saint-Simonian contribution was to insist that this privilege too must go: indeed, they made it the cardinal point of their programme.

The State, even if it is disguised as the ‘Association des travailleurs,’ thus becomes every man's heir; and, assuming that the State rises to its task, this universal heir will be committed to a complete scheme of State socialism. For obviously, in the course of little over a generation, it will own everything—or as near everything as makes no difference. In the vision of the Saint-Simonian school there was to be here a social institution which would be the depository of all the instruments of production, which would preside over that part of the exploitation of the globe which fell within its province, and which would direct production. In short, it would be possible to organise industry, and obtain that grande vue which was the dream of Saint-Simon and his disciples alike.²

Enough has been said in the foregoing pages to indicate the nature of the influence exercised by Saint-Simon, directly and through his school. He was the forerunner of Comte and of positivism; he was the apostle of big business combined with equal opportunity; at times almost a forerunner of ‘technocracy’; a believer in a business government, preferably with government replaced by administration—in that rather cryptic phrase. By their modest addition, the Saint-Simonians took a short cut to a complete system of State socialism. On one point, however, in order to avoid any misapprehension, a further word may be allowed. While insisting on equality of opportunity, the whole Saint-Simonian school set its countenance rigidly against any suggestion of equality in fact—the ‘real’ equality desired by Babeuf. Indeed, they almost boasted of their belief in the natural inequality of men; and (with some justification) regarded this as the basis of association, and as an indispensable condition of the social order.¹ It is, they would have said, precisely because men are unequal and unlike that you can dovetail them together. So also, they repudiated suggestions of equality of reward. Men were, in their familiar formula, to be placed according to their capacity, and rewarded according to their works. Indeed the idea of a hierarchy is almost too dear to the hearts of the Saint-Simonians. In the new State, become the universal heir, the social fund is to be exploited not merely by association, but hiérarchiquement—which somehow sounds a barbarous word. In looking to the future, what the Saint-Simonians hope to attain is ‘Order,’ which is expanded to mean ‘la hiérarchie la plus unitaire, la plus ferme.’² We seem to be trembling on the brink of the totalitarian State. Moreover, our uneasy feeling is somewhat accentuated by the writer of the introduction to the Doctrine de Saint-Simon who, in a passage aiming at eloquence, exclaims: ‘Partisans de l'égalité! Saint-Simon vous dit que les hommes sont inégaux.... Défenseurs de la Liberté! Saint-Simon vous dit que vous aurez des chefs’; and he goes on to add that those whom he is addressing may have desired in the past to get rid of detested masters, nevertheless they never said, ‘plus de guides pour l'humanité! plus de grands hommes!’³ Saint-Simon, groping for spiritual leadership, for torches and lumières; the Saint-Simonians, demanding of the future the ‘most unitary hierarchy’; Carlyle, in search of the hero and extolling hero-worship—what is all this but the Führerprinzip of latter days? Perhaps we have grown rather tired of the Führerprinzip and of all its works, and of the ‘qualities of leadership’ which the aspiring young are sometimes expected to reveal in the course of an oral examination. For the trouble about the Führerprinzip is that while it postulates a Leader, it equally postulates that all the rest shall be prepared to be led or misled as the case may be, and that they will with lamblike simplicity walk up any garden path they may be invited to enter. And there is this further evil consequence that the cult of leadership may be, and is, invoked to relieve the flock from all moral responsibility for what they may have done in too faithfully treading, in simplicity or in cowardice, in the Leader's footsteps. ‘As for these sheep, what have they done?’ The question derives from the Psalmist David in one of his less ecstatic moments; but with variation in intonation and application, it recurs throughout history whenever the Führerprinzip has succeeded in landing its victims in a mess. Enough, however, at this stage to note that, on one side, Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians alike, in their love of order, of hierarchy and of leadership, are at the roots of the tradition that blossoms in the full enunciation of the Führerprinzip.

NOTE.

One of the most important documents in Saint-Simonian literature is the letter which Enfantin and Bazard addressed jointly to the President of the Chamber of Deputies on 1st October, 1830. In a debate in the Chamber reference had been made to the Saint-Simonians, attributing to them advocacy of community of goods and the enunciation of immoral doctrines on the question of women. The letter, which is obviously the work of Bazard, contains one of the most concise statements of what the Saint-Simonians regarded as their essential tenets, and an extract from this document may be a useful addition to the foregoing chapter.

‘Le système de la communauté des biens s'entend universellement du partage égal entre tous les membres de la Société, soit du fonds lui-même de la production, soit des fruits du travail de tous.

‘Les Saint-Simoniens repoussent ce partage égal de la propriété, qui constituerait à leurs yeux une violence plus grande, une injustice plus révoltante que le partage inégal qui s'est effectué primitivement par la force des armes, par la conquête:

‘Car ils croient a l'INÉGALITÉ naturelle des hommes, et regardent cette inégalité comme la base même de l'association, comme la condition indispensable de l'ORDRE social.

‘Ils repoussent le système de la communauté des biens; car cette communauté serait une violation manifeste de la première de toutes les lois morales qu'ils ont reçu mission d'enseigner, et qui veut qu'à l'avenir chacun soit placé selon sa capacité, et rétribué selon ses œuvres.

‘Mais en vertu de cette loi, ils demandent l'abolition de tous les priviléges de la naissance sans exception, et par conséquent la destruction de l'HÉRITAGE, le plus grand de tous ces priviléges, celui qui les comprend tous aujourd'hui, et dont l'effet est de laisser au hasard la répartition des avantages sociaux, parmi le petit nombre de ceux qui peuvent y pretendre, et de condamner la classe la plus nombreuse à la dépravation, à l'ignorance, à la misère.

‘Ils demandent que tous les instrumens du travail, les terres et les capitaux, qui forment aujourd'hui le fonds morcelé des propriétés particulières, soient réunis en un fonds social, et que ce fonds soit exploité par association et HIÉRARCHIQUEMENT, de manière à ce que la tâche de chacun soit l'expression de sa capacité, et sa richesse le mesure de ses œuvres.

‘Les Saint-Simoniens ne viennent porter atteinte à la constitution de la propriété qu'en tant qu'elle consacre, pour quelques uns, le privilége impie de l'OISIVETÉ, c'est-à-dire celui de vivre du travail d'autrui; qu'en tant qu'elle abandonne au hasard de la naissance le classement social des individus.’