Saint-Simonianism

“ Saint-Simon's ideal was that of a State controlled in things of the mind by men of science, and in material affairs by the captains of industry. The aim of society should be the exploitation of the globe by associative effort. In his Nouveau Christianisme he thought to deliver the Christian religion from the outworn superstition, as he regarded it, alike of Catholicism and Protestantism, and to point out its true principle as adapted to our nineteenth century—that of human charity, the united effort of men towards the well-being of the poorest class. ”

“ Comparatively unimportant changes of opinion respecting the details of his practical programme, as well as other minor points, will be omitted in this presentation.
We find running through all the writings of Saint-Simon, from his first work, “Lettres d’un Habitant de Genève,” to his last one, the “Nouveau Christianisme,” an aim and purpose which may be considered the leading feature of his system. It is the attempt to discover an authority which shall rule the inner life of man as well as his external acts. ”

“ We must not think it religious to despise the body or material welfare. God manifests Himself as matter and spirit, so Religion must not despise economics but rather unite industry and science as Love unites spirit and matter. Eternal Life, of which Christianity makes so much, is not to be sought, argued Saint-Simon, in another world, but here and now in the love and service of our brothers, in the uplift of humanity as a whole. ”

“ Science and industry, however, having only relation to material nature, Saint-Simon thought there was a part to be given to the moral order, to the beautiful or the good; hence a third class, which he now calls artists, now moralists and philosophers, and to whom a sort of religious rôle is assigned. ”

“ He did not understand the social import of religion, and he represented the Middle Ages as a useless interruption of the forward movement. Here Saint-Simon learned from the religious reaction. He saw that religion has a natural and legitimate social role and cannot be eliminated as a mere perversity. He expounded the doctrine that all social phenomena cohere. A religious system, he said, always corresponds to the stage of science which the society wherein it appears has reached; in fact, religion is merely science clothed in a form suitable to the emotional needs which it satisfies. ”

“ The organizers of Saint-Simonism have taken for their first article of belief: war to the death between the family, property and religion on one hand and ourselves on the other. They ought to perish. The world, by the force of speech is not conquered; it is to be converted, stirred, wrought into activity, changed.
“So long as an idea is not practical, it is not presentable to the world of society. Human nature goes from the known to the unknown, but not from the known to the absurd. ”

“ Saint-Simonism was universally jeered at, but it is quite a mistake to think that ridicule is detrimental in France. On the contrary, it is an excellent means of getting anything known and of spreading the knowledge of it abroad; it is in reality a force. Saint-Simonism is at the root of many of the humanitarian doctrines which were to spring up from its ashes. One of its essential doctrines was the diffusion of the soul throughout all humanity, and another that of being born anew. ”

“ Fourier relies upon the analysis of the human passions; Robert Owen starts from certain considerations on the formation of human character; Saint Simon, despite his deep comprehension of the historical evolution of humanity, constantly returns to "human nature" in order to explain the laws of this evolution; [21] the Saint-Simonians declared their philosophy was "based upon a new conception of human nature." ”

“ Saint-Simon has arisen as the complement of Christ; as the modern exponent of the doctrine of equality, or rather of its practice, for theory has served its time—”
“Is he liberated?” asked the lunatic.
“Like liberalism, it has had its day. There is a nobler future before us: a new faith, free labor, free growth, free production, individual progress, a social co-ordination in which each man shall receive the full worth of his individual labor, in which no man shall be preyed upon by other men who, without capacity of their own, compel all to work for the profit of one. ”

“ Many disguised priests are now gliding and sliding here and there among the people, persuading them that a rosary which has been consecrated is a perfect preservative against the cholera. [20] The Saint-Simonists regard it as an advantage of their religion that none of their number can die of the prevailing malady, because progress is a law of nature, and as social progress is specially in Saint-Simonism, so long as the number of its apostles is incomplete none of its followers can die. ”

“ And, lastly, we have, in the matter of religion, rejection of all dogma, not with the aim of destroying religion, but for the purpose of rescuing from the grave of orthodoxy the one command: Love one another! This is the Christianity which Saint-Simon expounded in his last important work, Le nouveau Christianisme, a Christianity with only one doctrine, which may be expressed as follows: The task of religion is to help society to accomplish that great object, the speediest possible improvement of the condition of the poorest and most numerous class. ”

“ The weakness often lies in the morality of the production, or rather in its lack of morality, often so lacking that the author sinks to the level of producing repulsive works and cynical pictures.
In view also of man's essential faculties, but from another point of view, St.-Simonianism classed men as scholars, artists and artisans. Then were added the priests of a new order whose nature, more perfectly balanced, was to furnish the model type of future humanity. ”

“ The task of Saint Simon was to prepare the way for a social reformation. But he thought that the only possibility of such a reformation involved the founding of a new world-theory which might accomplish for the present age what Christianity had done for the Middle Ages. Such a new world-theory, in the opinion of Saint Simon, must be constructed on the foundation of an encyclopedia of the positive sciences. This is all the more true, because it must now transpire that men shall make common cause in the exploitation of nature instead of the mutual exploitation of each other. ”

“ He had declared his positive philosophy to be "in radical and absolute contradiction to every kind of religious or metaphysical tendency." {305} He had separated with éclat from the Saint-Simonians, "for they will soon," he said, "sink themselves in ridicule and contempt. Only imagine, their heads are turned to such a degree, that they propose nothing less than the establishment of a real, new religion, a sort of incarnation of the divinity in the person of Saint-Simon." ”

“ The school of Saint-Simon insists strongly on the claims of merit; they advocate a social hierarchy in which each man shall be placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. This is, indeed, a most special and pronounced feature of the Saint-Simon Socialism, whose theory of government is a kind of spiritual or scientific autocracy. ”

“ In his New Christianity, Saint Simon, who was referred to in the preceding chapter, made a unique contribution to social thought. His thinking was227 not deep, or systematic, but characterized by ingenuity. Saint Simon advocated a society in which only useful things are produced. In this industrial order, men of science will be in control. Saint Simon was greatly interested in the welfare of the poorest classes. His New Christianity was essentially a plea that the whole world devote itself to the improvment of the living conditions of the very poor. ”

“ It is sufficient to say that it is a great mistake to regard Saint Simon as a mere selfish aristocrat in the cant sense. He would have had the kingdom justly and wisely governed for the benefit of the whole nation, but he regarded the nobility, and, above all, the peers, as the pre-destined instruments of government. 'Much for the people, but nothing by the people,' was his political motto.
The importance of Saint Simon in literature is, however, entirely independent of his standpoint as a politician, though that standpoint was not without influence on his literary characteristics. ”

“ To predict is impossible, for foreknowledge is for God alone; but to foresee is possible, and forethought is for man.”
Lamartine analyzes closely the doctrines of Saint-Simonism, and what he considers their weak points. “We must not,” he says, “judge new ideas by the derision which they encounter during the period. All great thoughts were first received in the world as aliens. Saint-Simonism has in it a something true, grand and beautiful; the application of Christianity to civil society, the legislation of Human Brotherhood. ”

“ What God is that?"
"A very just God, Señor Simoun," replied the priest. "A God who chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it, and it is just, very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer them. It is the God of liberty, Señor Simoun, who obliges us to love it, by making the yoke heavy for us—a God of mercy, of equity, who while He chastises us betters us and only grants prosperity to him who has merited it through his efforts. ”

“ Yes, without doubt, the Saint-Simonians profess peculiar views regarding property and the future of women, as well as concerning religion, power, liberty, and, finally, concerning all the great problems which are agitated so violently in Europe to-day. But these are very different from those ascribed to them. The system of community of goods means a division among all the members of society, either of the means of production or of the fruits of the toil of all. ”

“ Saint-Simon thought it necessary to add an experimental training to his theoretical one in order to prepare himself for his mission, and accomplished this by living every kind of life, from that of the wealthy entertainer of savants to one of poverty and dissipation. ”

“ Faith, religion, conscience, self-subordination to the public good, have no place in his list of human motives; interest, ambition, calculation, envy, are the forces which, according to his experience, move the world. That the strong should trample on the weak, that the wily should circumvent the innocent, that hypocrisy and fraud and dissimulation should triumph, seems to him but natural. His whole theory of humanity is tinged with the sad gray colors of a stolid, cold-eyed, ill-contented, egotistical indifference. ”

“ The atmosphere of Phariseeism in its moral aspects was hazy; it magnified human virtues, and created all sorts of illusive mirages of self-righteousness and reputed holiness, and doubtless Simon's vision had been impaired by the refracting atmosphere of his creed. The greatness of our salvation is ever measured by the greatness of our danger and our guilt. The heavier the burden and weight of condemnation, the deeper is the peace and the higher are the ecstasies of [223] joy when that condemnation is removed. Shall we say, then, "We must sin more, that love may more abound"? ”

“ How did Simon account for the separation of the sexes, and its influence upon subsequent humanity?
The answer to this question involves Simon’s ideas as to the cause of evil in this world and the means by which man can escape from it. Man was, as we have seen, formed out of dust, but to make him, in the words of Genesis, “a living soul,” it was necessary that he should be animated by the breath (πνεῦμα) of the Divinity. ”

“ Here, I am perpetually annoyed by the struggle to subdue within the social limits the expression of that nature which is for ever boiling up within me, and the utterance of which is neither more nor less than the heart's utterance of the faith and hope which are in it. We are told of those nice preachers who 'never mention hell to ears polite.' They are the preachers of your highly-refined, sentimental society. Whatever hell may be, they are the very teachers that, by their mincing forbearance, conduct the poor soul that relies on them into its jaws. ”

“ You, Simmias, think that the soul may be but as a harmony in the body. But do you not remember what we said about all knowledge being a remembering, and that what the soul knows it has before learnt? It existed then before the body; but a harmony cannot exist before the things are put together of which it proceeds. Then again harmony may be more or less; but one soul cannot be more a soul than another. And if, as the wise men say, virtue is harmony and vice discord, we have a harmony of a discord, which cannot be ”

“ The men stood motionless in their places as Master Simon went on:
“Why must you be so stricken with blind terror,” he said, “when one amongst us takes a further step along that path to freedom that we ourselves have followed, that dares to think other than the rest of us? Is it reasonable that each one of us should say: ‘I will believe as I choose and all men must think as I do’? Search your hearts truly and ask yourselves if there be not some point of doctrine, some order of worship that you have not questioned either once or many times. ”

“ According to this, therefore, there can be neither righteousness, nor goodness, nor any virtue, nor, as you would have it, any God. But, O Simon, I know why you have spoken thus: truly because you wish to avoid inquiry, lest you should be openly confuted; and therefore you say that it is not in the power of man to perceive or to discern anything. But if this had really been your opinion, you would not surely, before my coming, have professed yourself before the people to be a teacher. I say, therefore, that man is under his own control. ”