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History for Utopia: Saint-Simon and the Idea of Progress

Author(s): Walter M. Simon


Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jun., 1956), pp. 311-331
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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HISTORY FOR UTOPIA:
SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS

BY WALTERM. SIMON

The reputation of Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon has declined with


the passing years, and perhaps deservedly so. Although he clearly
had a first-rate mind, he was at best a second-rate thinker, far from
being original and even farther from being systematic. He bent his
energies with passionate devotion to the pursuit of that knowledge
which was to make men, not free, to be sure, but happy; but he
pursued it often with more zeal than discrimination. His intellect
was sensitive enough to prevent him from subscribing to the facile
system of the Enlightenment, but not powerful enough to enable
him to construct a coherent one of his own; so that he fell, it is to be
feared, into that dubious category of precursors who are not worthy
to tie the shoes of those who come after them. The disciples of the
latter-in this instance, of course, of Comte-have naturally been at
pains to emphasize this relationship, and they have made the point,
at first gropingly, but with increasing precision.' But even his most
unyielding detractors allow him the status of a catalytic agent, and
an impartial judgment should, I think, allow him a more active in-
tellectual role than that.2
If there is one field in which the fertility of his thought is less
open to doubt than any other, there cannot be much question that it
would be the field of history; and this despite the facts that he had
no historical training, wrote abominable history, made no pretensions
to historical scholarship, was, indeed, not to put too fine a point on
the matter, no historian, but rather a philosopher of history, to whom
it never occurred that the two vocations were interdependent.3 His-
1 . . . that order of ideas," said one of Comte's early followers of Saint-Simon's
thought, " which was no longer the revolutionary system, but which was not yet the
positive system." (E. Littre, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive [3rd ed.,
Paris, 1877], 12.) A recent painstaking and scholarly examination of Comte's rela-
tionship with Saint-Simon asserts, concerning the latter, that " the ideas which flit
around in his head are the pre-positivist themes" which were everywhere to be
heard at the time. (Henri Gouhier, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation
du positivisme [Paris, 1933-1941], II, 348.) 2 Ibid., II, 348-349: ". . . in the
restless coursing of the intellect, we find not only those who conceive ideas and those
who can integrate them: there are also those who have the power of transforming
them into ideals. . . . Saint-Simon is such a man; his internal dynamism sets up
around him a field of pulsating intellectual activity."
3 On the importance of Saint-Simon's historical thinking (regardless of its qual-

ity) there is general agreement; see, e.g., Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und
seine Probleme (Tiibingen, 1922), p. 390. Even the Marxist writer, interested in
Saint-Simon of course principally from the point of view of socialism, declares that
311

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312 WALTER M. SIMON

tory to him was utilitarian and didactic: he was devoted to history


as a field of study because he believed that from it lessons could be
drawn to guide his contemporaries. Temperamentally,moreover,
Saint-Simon had neither the patience nor the powers of concentra-
tion requiredfor systematic research,historical or otherwise. There
are, unfortunately, very few direct indications of the nature and
extent of his reading (except that he read novels omnivorously), so
that his habits of researchand compositionmust be inferredmainly
from his writings, which are, however, revealing enough. Some of
his factual statements are very strange; for instance, there was prev-
alent among the Turks, according to Saint-Simon, the view that
everybody was equally entitled to the exercise of arbitrarypower.4
Significantly, the most sustained piece of historical exposition in
Saint-Simon'spublishedworks was not written by him at all, but by
Comte, who was for some years his secretaryand collaborator.6
In fact, Saint-Simon constructeda theory of historicalknowledge
which justified neglect of details and extolled the bird's-eyeview of
history, the thumbnailsketch, and the sweepinggeneralizationas the
highest possible achievements. He recommended"a vantage point
sufficientlyelevated to enable one to take in at a single glance the
whole course of civilization ; 6 history, he complained, was still re-
garded as a branch of literature, and it would never achieve the
status of a science unless it became " a simple series of observations
on the course and development of civilization," observations from
which historianswould then be able to induce generallaws.7 Claim-
ing the world as his domain and " the course of civilization" as his
subject matter, he did not regardit as necessaryto study these broad
areas in order to arrive at valid and useful conclusionsabout them.
European civilization, he declared,was supreme and could serve as
it was his philosophyof history, and not his own attempts at socialist theory, that
"was the source of inspirationfor almost all later socialists." (Samuel Bernstein,
"Saint-Simon'sPhilosophyof History,"Science and Society, XII [1948], 82.) On
Saint-Simon'sshortcomingsas a historianstrictly speaking,I hope to be in a posi-
tion to offer a more extended expositionand analysis in the future.
4 Oeuvres de Saint-Simonet d'Enfantin (Paris,
1865-78), XXII, 17 and n. 1.
(This collectionwill hereafterbe referredto as Oeuvres,but whereverpossible cita-
tions are taken from the more accessibleedition, Oeuvreschoisiesde C.-H. de Saint-
Simon [Brussels,1859], whichwill be abbreviatedto O. c. Translationsfrom Saint-
Simon [as well as from secondaryworks] are my own.) This remark must have
fallenwonderfullyon the earsof the many Frenchmenwhohad travelledin the Levant.
5 This
passageconsistsof Letters 8 and 9 of "L'Organisateur,"Oeuvres,XX, 77-
165. Documentationof Comte'sauthorshipin Comte'sSystemede politiquepositive
(Paris, 1912), IV, Appendice, iii, confirmedby Gouhier, La jeunesse d'Auguste
Comte,III, 264 and n. 11.
6
Oeuvres,XXIII, 48. 7 Oeuvres,XX, 71.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 313

the yardstick and test case for all the inferior civilizations, even with-
out explicit comparisons; 8 while chronologically, history did not be-
come " really interesting and instructive " until the time of Socrates.9
The simple series of observations; the inducing of general laws;
the instructiveness of history-these are some of the expressions of
the positivism (or if with Professor Gouhier one prefers it, pre-
positivism) in Saint-Simon which must form the first topic in any
examination of his historical thinking. With Saint-Simon as with its
later, greater, and more systematic exponents, what was of the essence
in positivism was both an aim and a method, reflecting perhaps a
dual meaning of the word positive. The aim, which was by no means
new, was to secure a comprehensive, reliable, coherent picture of the
universe and of the laws governing it. The method, of somewhat less
hallowed vintage, was simply to apply the method of the natural
sciences to other areas of knowledge, where it would yield equally
spectacular and unassailable results. Generally speaking, the method
of the natural sciences was understood by positivists to mean em-
piricism, but there were both conscious reservations to this principle
and unconscious departures from it of which we shall have to take
note in the case of Saint-Simon. To permit the extension of scien-
tific method to new fields, two initial assumptions were made which
were methodological in their intent but metaphysical in their im-
plications. One was the celebrated Law of the Three States (or
Stages) which originated with Turgot and was adopted by Saint-
Simon, who passed it on to Comte.10 According to this law, as formu-
lated by Comte, "From the nature of the human intellect each
branch of knowledge in its development is necessarily obliged to pass
through three different theoretical states: the Theological or fictitious
state; the Metaphysical or abstract state; lastly, the Scientific or
positive state." 1 Closely connected with this law was the other
assumption, that the various branches of knowledge, or sciences, were
arranged in a hierarchy. Since all knowledge about the universe was
part of one vast and coherent system, all the branches of knowledge
were mutually linked and interdependent. The hierarchy of the
sciences specified the various relations of dependence and established
the areas in which knowledge could not be expected to emerge until
knowledge in certain other areas had supplied tools and data. This
hierarchy of increasing difficulty therefore provided a chronological
guide to the order in which the various sciences would pass through
8 O. c., I, 173, 188; II, 105; III, 374. 9 0. c., I, 188.
10 Cf. John Theodore Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth
Century (Edinburgh and London, 1907-14), IV, 483, n. 1.
11 Quoted ibid., IV, 484.

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314 WALTER M. SIMON

the three stages of knowledge. The science of society, or sociology as


it came to be called, was at the apex of the pyramid of knowledge,
which meant that society was the last area of human inquiry to be
illuminated by the techniques of the natural sciences and thereby to
become positive.'2
Saint-Simon judged that the time for this final triumph of the
human mind, the completion of the positivist system by the addition
of its coping stone, was at hand, and more than once he implied that
he himself was destined to be its principal agent.13 The eighteenth
century, Saint-Simon was fond of saying, had attempted to construct
a positive system of society, but had succeeded only in destroying the
old, metaphysical system without being able to raise the new one in
its place. This had not been an inconsiderable task; it had, in fact,
been the task allotted to the eighteenth century; nevertheless the
really creative job still remained to be done, and all the necessary
materials were now assembled.l4 The most vital of these materials
was history scientifically conceived, to be supplied by Saint-Simon
himself, and strongly contrasted with the old history:
History, it is said, is the breviary of kings. From the way that kings gov-
ern, it is obvious that their breviary is worthless. History, in fact, from a
scientificviewpoint,is still in its swaddling-clothes. This importantbranch
of knowledgeis still nothing but a, collection of facts more or less well es-
tablished. These facts are not connectedby any theory, they are not ar-
ranged in a sequence of cause and effect. . ..15

When at one time Saint-Simon planned to publish a new, positivist


Encyclopedia to replace the Encyclopedie of Diderot and d'Alembert
(which, again, had been merely destructive and not creative and had
simply compiled data without establishing any connections among
them) history was to occupy the key position in this "scientific"
project. Saint-Simon explained that it would be constructed on the
principle that "science, as a whole as well as in its various parts,
must be based on observation. It is therefore an analysis of the ad-
vances of the human mind that must serve as the basis for the ency-
clopedia " and provide its headings.16 The circle of positivist think-
ing about history is completed: empiricism on an encyclopedic scale
12 On this whole matter of the applicationof the methodsof the natural sciences

to other fields, see the recent book of F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolutionof Sci-
ence (Glencoe,Ill., 1952). Essentiallya polemicagainstsocial planningwhich over-
states its case, it is neverthelessa challengingwork.
13E.g., Oeuvres,XV, 90.
Sometimes,curiously,Saint-Simonsaid that the " sci-
ence of man" had already reachedthe stage of positivism: Oeuvres,XV, 108-109;
XXI, 137-138. 14 Oeuvres,XVIII, 216-220; XX, 6; 0. c., II, 237.
15 0. c., II, 195-196. 16 Oeuvres,
XV, 91, 147-149.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 315

is primarily historical, because history stands at the pinnacle of the


positivist hierarchy of the sciences, and because empiricism, being
the method of all the other sciences, is therefore pre-eminently the
method of the "science of man." 17
This strong propensity to regard empiricism, the "method of ob-
servation," as the only correct method of knowledge accounts for the
special meaning attached by Saint-Simon and by positivists gener-
ally to the word philosophy. Philosophy was represented as some-
thing lofty and formidable, but at the same time was not allotted any
place in the hierarchy of the sciences, because it dealt only with gen-
eralities, that is to say, because it was not a science in its own right
but merely a generic name for the whole of science: " The particular
sciences are the elements of general science which has been given the
name philosophy," and philosophy would become positive when all
of the several particular sciences had become positive.l8 In thus re-
fusing to grant to philosophy an autonomous existence, Saint-Simon
was, to be sure, merely following the practice of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, but doing it with a more conscious purpose,
namely, to harness philosophy to the facts and prevent it from be-
coming speculative. Yet, on the other hand, philosophy in its ca-
pacity as a generalizing, synthesizing mode of thought was the heart
and soul of positivism, and neither Saint-Simon nor any other posi-
tivist could be content with empiricism alone, however much they
might protest that they were.l9 It is therefore not surprising to find
that Saint-Simon was not, after all, always a consistent advocate
of experiment and of fact-finding. Reason and experience, he wrote,
were both elements of the scientific method, and experience some-
times merely confirmed a conclusion already reached through reason;
alternatively, certain facts obtained through experience could have
been "divined through meditation." 20 Neither the analytic nor the
synthetic method was per se better; the two were complementary,
like the raising and lowering of a piston.2' When in this mood Saint-
Simon was prepared, of course, to apply the conclusion to history as
well as to other sciences: " It is now time to return to a general point
17 0. c., II, 195-196. For Saint-Simon's specific commitments, at various times,
to empiricism, see 0. c., II, 8, 14, 144; Oeuvres, XX, 76, 226-227, 238-239; " Lettre
inedite [1815] de Henri de Saint-Simon sur l'organisation du droit public," Revue
d'histoire economique et sociale, XIII (1925), 131; and perhaps, above all, De la
reorganisation de la societe europeenne (ed. Alfred Pereire) (Paris [1925]), 28-29.
18 Oeuvres, XV, 109-110; and cf. XV, 128, 0. c., II, 14-15, 237; III, 217, and

Littre, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, 30.


19 On positivism and philosophy as a discipline, see the remarks on Comte in
Ernst Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge (New Haven, 1950), 6-9.
20 De la
reorganisation de la societe europeenne, 40; Oeuvres, XXI, 80.

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316 WALTER M. SIMON

of view. Our task should be to correlate the detailed maps made


during the last hundred years; we have all the materials necessary to
draw a comprehensive map." 22
The urge of the positivist was to generalize and to moralize. All
generalizations, no doubt, ought to be based on facts, but on the
other hand all facts ought to be made to yield generalizations, and in
their enthusiasm for generalization the positivists often far exceeded
the limits of their factual information. Philosophy remained the
queen of the sciences even though it was robbed of its place among
them, and positive philosophy remained speculative even though it
had purportedly been disarmed of the poisonous fangs of speculation.
Positive philosophy, moreover, was programmatic, and, what was
worse, programmatic in its own behalf. Saint-Simon never tired of
making the orchestra of positivist instruments play the theme of the
coming triumph of positivism; and since in Saint-Simon's system, as
we shall see later, positivism was bound up with a specific type of
social organization which he called industrial, positivism itself un-
mistakably indicated the imminent establishment of that system:
... as the ultimate result of the course of civilization so far, the clerical,
noble, and judicial classes will find themselves subjectedto the critical in-
spection of positive philosophy,by which they will be destroyed as institu-
tions. Positive philosophy will eliminate legal chicanery from politics; it
will vest the powershithertoexercisedby theological and feudal institutions
in the industrialforces in society.23 [Or again: 24] A survey of the history
of society [note the bird's-eyeview again] has shown us that the industrial
class has continuallyincreasedin importance,while the others have become
less and less significant; from which we are obliged to conclude that the
industrialclass must in the end becomethe most importantof all.
By the method of positivism, in short, Saint-Simon argued that man-
kind was moving, both intellectually and socially, into the era of
positivism. In the last analysis, therefore, his system was not only
speculative rather than strictly empirical, it was also one vast piece
of special pleading rather than an objective presentation of the re-
sults of inquiry; and it was logically untenable to boot, since it pur-
ported to prove its own inevitability and hence its validity. Ernst
Troeltsch noted that Saint-Simon's method was teleological as well
as causal, that although he prided himself on his participation in the
Anglo-French empirical tradition as opposed to German abstract ra-
tionalism, his pursuit of the laws governing the world as it was in
the present [seinswissenschaftlicheGesetzeserkenntnis]was vitiated
by his vision of the world as it ought to be in the future [wertwis-
210. c., I, 77. 22 . C., I, 59.
23
Oeuvres, XXI, 177-178. 24 0. c., III, 96.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 317

senschaftliche Zukunftsgestaltung], implying that the laws were


shaped so as to produce the vision.25 Not only that, but sometimes
his prescriptions for bringing about his ideal in the future violated
his own laws of historical development.2
II
Nevertheless, the purpose of Saint-Simon's life-work was the
utilitarian and didactic one of inculcating in his contemporaries cor-
rect political behavior by means of the application of historical
knowledge. If for the eighteenth-century philosopher history was
philosophy teaching by example, for Saint-Simon history was philos-
ophy imperiously demanding obedience to its dictates, and confer-
ring grace on those who hearkened. He once described his own aim
in life in these words: " To study the course of the human mind, in
order then to work for the perfection of civilization..." 27 The past
had no intrinsic value in itself: "You must cast your glance not at
the past . . ., but at the future: you must recall the past only to
profit from the experience so dearly bought there," 28 he admonished
his readers. On the other hand:
We shall never have a clear idea of our real situation at present so long as
we confine ourselves to consideringit in isolation, without studying it in
connectionwith what has preparedand producedit. In fact, in our ob-
servation of the past we must go back to a very distant period, since ob-
viously we must take as our point of departurethe period in which the
political system that is now disappearingat the hands of progresswas defi-
nitely established,and in which the system that is now tending to replace
it was born.29
If, then, we wish to know whether we are conducting ourselves
correctly, we must " compare the course on which we have embarked
with the one prescribed to us by the development of civilization ...." 30
But we are inadequately equipped for this kind of undertaking, since
the kind of history that has hitherto been written does not " provide
the means for deducing what will happen from what has hap-
pened. ... No historian ... has yet said to the kings, this is what
will result from what has occurred, this is the order of the universe
which civilization will bring about, this is the goal toward which you
must direct the immense power that is in your hands." 31 A " philo-
sophical observation of the past" since the Middle Ages would en-
able us to distinguish "the remnants of a past which is dying from
25 Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme, 385-388.
26 See Friedrich Muckle, Henri de Saint-Simon: die Pers6nlichkeit und ihr Werk
(Jena, 1908), 170-171, and cf. e.g. 0. c., II, 248.
27
Oeuvres,XVIII, 148. 28 Oeuvres, XXII, 13-14. 29 0.
c., II, 417.

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318 WALTER M. SIMON

the seeds of a future which is rising,"and would provide a sufficient


and positive basis for the present policy of government.32 Saint-
Simon sometimes undertook merely to supply the material from
which his readers could themselves easily decide what ought to be
done,33but more frequently he offered the conclusionhimself. For
example, he posed the rhetoricalproblem whether the replacement
of governmentof people by administrationof things (one of his no-
table proto-Marxistobsessions) should be accomplishedgraduallyor
all at once. He answeredthat it should be done all at once, and ex-
plained: " We base this opinion chiefly on the following great fact, a
fact unique of its kind. Let us see how the only change of social
systems of which history has preservedan accurate and detailed ac-
count occurred."He was referringto the transition from classical to
medieval culture, what he called the passage from polytheism to
theism. The Christians,he said, all at once replaced thousands of
gods with one, without gradually reducing the number. The bar-
barian chiefs all at once replaced the consuls and proconsuls in
power, the slaves all at once ceased to depend on their masters and
were attached to the soil. The conclusionto be deduced from this
fact was that " changes in system take place suddenly"! 34
Saint-Simon was habitually cocksure about the validity of his
analyses. What his readerswanted most to know, he said, and what
he would tell them was " WHAT WILL HAPPEN.... I will express
myself on this subject as categorically as possible. I will tell you
what will happen, how it will happen, and who will do it." 35 The
validity of his predictionsderived from the predictive power of his-
tory, which when practiced scientifically could prescribecorrect so-
cial actions just as biology could prescribecorrect medical actions.
Saint-Simon,like Condorcetwhom he quoted, talked about writing a
"history of the past and future of mankind."36 This would be a
feasible undertakingbecause " the future consists of the last terms of
a series whose first terms constitute the past. When one has care-
30 Oeuvres,
XX, 185. 310. c., II, 196. 32 Oeuvres, XXI, 69-70. 33 0. c., III, 302-4.
34 0. c., III, 298-299. For anotherexample,see Oeuvres,XXII, 251.
35Oeuvres,XXII, 114. Even when he admitted that he was
oversimplifying,
his excuse for doing so was characteristic:"I do not consider it impossiblethat
things will turn out differentlyfrom what I have described,althoughI considerthe
series of events that I have indicatedas the most likely. In expressingmyself as I
did, I merely wanted to paint as simple a picture of the future as possible for you,
in orderto attract all your attention to the consequencesthat I have deducedfrom
it concerningthe line of conduct that you must take up." (Oeuvres, XXII, 76.)
If action is to be harnessedto prediction,and if a certain type of action is desired,
then predictionmust needs be tailoredso as to indicate that type of action!

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 319

fully studied the first terms of a series, it is easy to supply the fol-
lowing ones; thus one may easily deduce the future from a proper
observation of the past." 37 From here it is only one more step to
the further statement that a " study of the course taken by the hu-
man mind up to this point will reveal to us what useful steps remain
to be taken by it...." 38

III
If historical analysis could provide watertight predictions, and
therefore prescriptions, for the future because the future could, as it
were, be extrapolated on the graph representing the past, then clearly
the course of human events was subject, in Saint-Simon's system, to
a rigid determinism. A certain line of development, once started,
could continue in one direction and one direction only. The plotter
of the graph had merely to analyze accurately and completely the
data available to him, and only one possible configuration would
present itself. Saint-Simon never used the word determinism, but
freely acknowledged the substance without worrying much about its
philosophical justification, or about the nature of the determining
agency which he was wont to describe as "the order of things." A
social system, he said, could not be created; all that one could do was
to "perceive the new complex of ideas and interests that has come
into being, and to demonstrate it. ... A social system is a fact, or
else it is nothing." 39 The inculcation of correct political attitudes,
then, in which Saint-Simon was engaged, consisted not in developing
people's political judgment and teaching them to use it, but rather in
making people aware of what, as a group, they were going to do
anyway:
. . we wish merely to light the way for the necessarycourseof things, and
to remove obstacles. We want men henceforthto do consciously,by direct
effort and with more fruitful results, what they have hitherto been doing as
it were unintentionally,slowly, indecisively, and with little success.40
Political success or failure depended, and was to be judged, not on
moral considerations or even on ordinary grounds of expediency, but
on whether the action undertaken was conformable to the pattern
being traced by history. Martin Luther, for example, had succeeded
in an apparently utopian project, that of overthrowing the papal
power, because, having " observed the course of the human mind, he
recognized that that which everyone else thought impossible was in
36 Oeuvres, XV, 111. 37 Oeuvres, XV, 122. 38 0. c., II, 12-13.
39 Oeuvres, XX, 179-180. 40 lb., XVIII, 166.

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320 WALTER M. SIMON

fact inevitable and ripe for execution."41 Similarly, Saint-Simon


himself concocteda constitution for France, whose suitability should
be estimated solely by the criterionof its conformabilityto a correct
view of the history of the past eight centuries. Whatever "plan of
social organizationis appropriateto the present state of knowledge
must be based entirely on a philosophicalobservationof the course
of civilization in recent centuries. Nothing can ever upset this
fundamental political truth." And Saint-Simon believed that the
system he recommendedwas, "apart from its merits, the one which
must naturally come into being at this time, due simply to the course
of events, and to the law of progressof the human mind."42
To be on the side of the angels, in short, meant to be on the side
of history. Men could not shape their society's destiny, they could
merely, in the phrase of that other determinist, hasten the birth-
pangs of events which would come about, if need be, despite the ef-
forts of men to forestall them. The unsuccessfulpolitician was the
one who failed to discern the directionbeing taken by the stream of
history and who was swept to destructionby it; the successfulstates-
man was the one who adjusted himself to the course of the stream
and was able to keep on an even keel. In Saint-Simon'sown day, all
the signs pointed infallibly, he declaredover and over again, to the
establishmentof an " industrial" society, by which he meant, briefly,
a society dominatedby the productiveelements in society, including
scientists, artists, intellectuals, as well as businessmenand industri-
alists strictly speaking. It should cause no great surprise that this
was just the sort of society which Saint-Simon preferredabove all
others: 43
The industrial system is the one toward which mankind has always been
moving; this will be the final system; all other political systems that have
existed should be consideredas merely preparatory.44
Here is not only prophecy,but eschatology. This inevitable result,
"rigorously deduced" from the experience of fourteen centuries,
could be broughtabout by " suitable conducton the part of the prin-
cipal leadersof industry...." 45 The latter had nothing to fear even
from a legislature in which recent elections had given a majority to
the nobility:
41Ib., XX, 68. 42Ib., XX, 180-181, 206.
43See the expositionin Charles Gide and Charles Rist, Histoire des doctrines
economiques(7th ed., Paris, 1947), 230-233, and Saint-Simon'shortatorylast work,
Nouveau Christianisme,passim. In his earliest writings,particularlyin the Lettre
d'un habitant de Geneve a ses contemporains,to be sure, Saint-Simonfavored a
regime by scientists, and he tried to promote a subscriptionfund with which to
establisha " Councilof Newton."
44Oeuvres,XXI, 166; cf. O. c., III, 123-124. 45 0. c., III, 103.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 321

The triumph of the industrial cause is the necessary result of the progress
of civilization to this date, not only in France, but throughoutwestern Eu-
rope; no human power can hope to prevent it.46
The god of history, evidently, could overcome legislatures. In the
same vein, Saint-Simon undertook to give some good advice to Louis
XVIII:
. . .the revolution is far from being at an end, and it will not be until it
has completelyattained the goal assignedto it by the courseof events, that
is to say, until the new political system is established. It is not in the
power of any human agency to turn the clock back on this natural move-
ment, or even to obey it only halfway: the best thing that royalty can do
is to place itself at the head of the movement.47
In fact, not only the industrialists and the existing government,
but everybody, ought to " work with a common purpose to introduce
that political system whose immediate establishment is irresistibly
dictated by the present state of civilization .. ." 48
It is not difficult to point out the weaknesses of Saint-Simon's
positivist and determinist attempt to make past history yield infalli-
ble rules for present conduct. Perhaps the most obvious weakness is
that history, like statistics, can be made to prove almost anything by
working backward from what is to be proved. In any history class-
room one may hear expounded daily the reasons why the Bourbon
monarchy was riding for the fall which came in 1789, or why the
overseas discoveries were bound to shift the balance of power in Eu-
rope. To explain why whatever has happened happened is, after all,
the business of the historian. But Saint-Simon evidently changed
the rules of the game by postulating what was going to happen be-
cause he wanted it to happen, and then used history to show why it
was going to happen; but in this process he lost the hindsight which
is the saving grace of the ordinary historian. Saint-Simon would
have claimed, for instance, not only to be able to explain why Louis
XVI lost his head, but also to have been able to keep his own head
if he had been in Louis' place; but this is just the sort of claim that
a modest historian would not make. Saint-Simon himself betrayed
the weakness of the claim in an interesting passage which fits the
above example. What someone should have said to Louis XVI in
1789, according to Saint-Simon, was this:
A great revolution is in the air and will soon break out. This revolution
will necessarilyend in the establishmentof a new social system which will
be essentially in the interests of the governed, and only secondarily useful
to the governors. This revolution cannot be averted, it cannot even be ap-
46
Oeuvres, XXII, 63. 47 Ib., XXI, 28. 48 Ib., XXII, 141.

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322 WALTER M. SIMON

preciablydelayed; for in the nature of things the immenseadvantageswhich


the governorsenjoyed in the beginningwere bound to be diminished con-
tinually as the governedbecame more enlightened.
This revolution would be peaceful if the king would lead it. Then
Saint-Simon gave himself away:
. . .what was extremely difficultto imagine in 1789 is now very easy to
determine,because experiencehas come to the aid of reason.49
The implication is clear that prediction is based on reason and not on
historical experience, as Saint-Simon usually asserted it was, and
that ultimately the only reliable way to know how a development
would eventuate was to wait and see.
The other principal weakness of Saint-Simon's deterministic his-
tory is that in a strictly deterministic system there is no room for
exhortation. But, as we have seen, Saint-Simon's industrialist es-
chatology, like Marx's proletarian eschatology, was constructed to
satisfy his own desires. Since the future was not only inevitable, but
also so eminently desirable, Saint-Simon, like Marx, could not wait
passively for it to happen, but had to help it along.50 The ambi-
guity which resulted, like Marx's about the hastening of the birth-
pangs, occasionally threatened to be resolved in favor of active inter-
vention rather than determinism. Saint-Simon spoke, for example,
in terms of " following the general tendency of a society by directing
it [suivre en la dirigeant]," 51in all probability an unconscious hos-
tage to activism. At other times Saint-Simon was much bolder in
abandoning his theoretically passive attitude to politics: "Circum-
stances are so pressing that it is a matter of applying the principle
without examining it thoroughly [sur son simple apergu]. On this
occasion, practice must precede theory." 52 This indecent haste of
Saint-Simon's to relegate the practice of positive philosophy to sec-
ond place after the achievement of a positive society was, inciden-
3
tally, one of the reasons for Comte's break with his mentor (al-
though Comte, too, in turn allowed the wish on occasion to become
father to the thought). Sometimes Saint-Simon appeared to feel
that the course of history, if it was determined at all, was determined
not by the grand ordre des choses, as he usually said, but by the
philosophers: "Only those kings have had great influence in the
world who, allowing themselves to move into their century, followed
49Oeuvres,XXIII, 69-71, 76. 50Cf. F. M. H. Markhamin his Introductionto
Saint-Simon,Selected Writings (Oxford,1952), p. xxiii.
51 Oeuvres, XXII, 224. 52 0. c., II, 248.
53Cf. FranckAlengry,Essai historiqueet critiquesur la sociologiechez Auguste
Comte (Paris, 1900), 468.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 323
the road marked out by the writings of their contemporaries." 54 Or
again, with equal obscurity: The royal power is far more limited
than people usually believe; it is limited by the general order of
things. A sovereign who tries to improve the social organization of
his people more than the state of their knowledge and of their civili-
zation permits will necessarily fail. . .. The industrial creed must be
propagated. . . . 55 Thus the industrialism which, according to
Saint-Simon, was ordained by fate, and which would triumph even
over a recalcitrant legislature, would after all have to await the deci-
sion of the publicists to adopt it as their cause.
IV
In fact, Saint-Simon believed that ideas were the chief motive
force in history. By introducing distinctions between final and effi-
cient causes, one could no doubt reconcile this belief with historical
determinism. One could argue that ideas were the instruments
through which the guiding hand of history worked its will. Such an
argument would, however, invest Saint-Simon with a consistency
which he did not possess; the ideas that he saw operating in history
persisted in asserting their autonomy. Saint-Simon associated him-
self with the revolt of Voltaire and Condorcet against history as a
mere " biography of power " 56 and found in the history of ideas the
element which gave a comprehensible unity to the past: 57 the com-
ings and goings of kings became meaningful if they were seen as
representatives of Weltanschauungen. Similarly, the future would
be shaped by the ideas governing it, and it therefore behooved phi-
losophers to produce the appropriate ideas, that is to say, positivist
ones. "Shall we be forced to choose between barbarism and absurd-
ity? " asked Saint-Simon, and apostrophized his contemporaries:
Writers of the nineteenth century, you alone can enable us to escape from
this unhappy dilemma. The social order has been overthrown,because it
no longer conformedto the intellectual climate; it is up to you to create a
better one .... You hold sway over [public] opinion, and public opinion
rules the world.58 [Or again:] ... the crisis affecting the entire popula-
tion of Europehas no other cause but the incoherenceof generalideas. As
soon as there is a theory appropriateto the state of knowledge [l'etat des
lumieres], orderwill be restored.59
54 De la reorganisation de la societe'
europeenne, 4. 55 0. c., III, 105.
56
Oeuvres, XX, 70. 57 Cf. Muckle, Saint-Simon, 59-60, 71-74; Paul Barth,
Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1915), I, 152-153,
628-629.
58 De la reorganisation de la societe' europeenne, 4; cf. O. c., II, 202.
59 0.
c., II, 241, and cf. Oeuvres, XXI, 167, XXII, 48-52, 56-58.

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324 WALTER M. SIMON

Practice must wait upon theory:


Is it surprising... that there is so much delay and uncertainty in the
establishmentand improvementof liberalinstitutionsin Europe,since social
theory, of which these institutions are merely the practical application, is
too fragmentaryto be universally propagated . . . ? 60
And finally, prescribing the remedy: 61
. . .the new political system of Europe must be the outcome of the new
philosophy .... The human mind has progressedto the point where the
key political decisions can and must be directly deduced from the knowl-
edge acquired in the social sciences [les hautes sciences] and the physical
sciences. It is my ambitionto give to politics a positive character.
But Saint-Simon could not remain consistently wedded to this
conception of philosophers and their ideas as independent and crea-
tive. There was a sense in which, Saint-Simon sometimes thought,
they also were predetermined: " The best use that man can make of
his faculties is to enable the human mind to enter upon the course
which it is destined [appele] to pursue.... 62 And there was a
standard by which one could judge whether a man was doing this: 63
The most useful step in the sciences is always the one which immediately
follows on the last ones that have been taken. The scientific undertaking
which contributesmost effectively to the increase of knowledge is always
the one that the most recent work of men of genius has prepared ....
Ideas ahead of their time, Saint-Simon declared, were useless. It is
clear, however, that this standard which Saint-Simon attempted to
establish is purely deductive and a priori; it is clear, in fact, that
Saint-Simon was badly confused in his whole approach to the role of
ideas in history and in politics. One factor which may account par-
tially, though not wholly, for this confusion is the chronological one
that Saint-Simon became increasingly impressed with the signifi-
cance of the class structure of society. Especially after 1815, when
the reaction against the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars set in,
Saint-Simon abandoned his earlier ideas of rule by the intellectuals
in favor of rule by the industrialists, in which category, to be sure,
intellectuals were included, but in which the economically produc-
tive were dominant. The reactionary social institutions of the
Restoration, he apparently felt, could be combated more effectively
by industrial than by intellectual progress. Not that even after 1815
this became a consistent attitude with Saint-Simon, for we have al-
ready seen evidence to the contrary. But there was a shift in his
thinking in the direction of according more importance to material
60 " Lettre sur l'organisationdu droit public,"130. 61 0.
c., II, 174.
62 Oeuvres, XV, 127. 63 0. c., II, 7.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 325

forces which was reflected in his historical excursions too. Even in


one of his earliest writings he had hinted that intellectual forces
worked through the medium of social classes: " As human knowledge
becomes broader and deeper, the governing class becomes more nu-
merous... ." 64 In the last year of his life he stated flatly: "... words
have no power to change things." 65 Instead, he had explained some
years earlier, "every political institution derives its power from the
service it renders to the majority of society, and therefore to the
poorest class." 66 Saint-Simon, by combining his determinism with
an increasing consciousness of the importance of class differences,
was thus led to suggest in a rather crude form the economic deter-
minism later elaborated and refined by Marx and Engels.67 But we
should beware of trying to explain away Saint-Simon's inconsist-
encies on a chronological basis too thoroughly. On the interaction of
intellectual and material forces in history he had had this to say in
an early work: " Scientific revolutions closely follow political revolu-
tions. Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation only a
few years after the death of Charles I." From this dubious premise
Saint-Simon drew the even more dubious conclusion that he himself
would be able to launch a scientific revolution of his own, since there
had just been a political revolution.68 At any rate, intellectual en-
deavor appears to depend on external circumstances. But in the
same piece Saint-Simon also wrote: 69 " Great ideas, the great scien-
tific revolutions are the result of great moral upheavals." Evidently
one may do violence to Saint-Simon by trying to reduce his work to
a completely intelligible scheme.
V
One important basis for the historical determinism which, in one
form or another, Saint-Simon usually expounded, was his belief that
the history of large numbers of people was analogous to the history,
that is to say the life-story, of individuals. Society no more than the
individual, according to Saint-Simon, can escape from the biological
limitations and obligations imposed on mankind. These limitations
and obligations must be taken into consideration in any historical ex-
planation of the past, and they enable the political scientist and the
64 0. c., I, 232. 65 0. c., III, 250, n. 1. 66
Oeuvres,XXI, 167.
67On the whole questionof the shift of Saint-Simon'semphasisfrom intellectual
to material, and especially economic,forces, see Henryk Grossman,"The Evolu-
tionist Revolt against ClassicalEconomics. I: in France-Condorcet, Saint-Simon,
Simondede Sismondi,"Journalof Political Economy, 51 (1943), 389-393; cf. Bern-
stein, "Saint-Simon'sPhilosophyof History,"Science and Society, XII, 89, 91, 95,
and Muckle, Henri de Saint-Simon,149-152. See also Barth, Philosophieder Ge-
schichte,I, 151, 628-9, 631.
68 0. c., I, 57. 69 0. c., I, 201.

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326 WALTER M. SIMON

statesman to predict the rise or the decay of an institution with the


same confidence that would inspire them in predicting the maturing
or declining of an individual:
Institutions, like individuals, have their youth, their maturity, and their
senility; like individuals,they are destined to be destroyed and to be re-
placed by new ones that have been born and have acquiredstrength under
the tutelary protectionof those that precededthem.70
On the principle that "general intelligence and individual intelli-
gence develop according to the same law," though on different scales,
Saint-Simon once drew up a comparative account of the history of
the human race and the life of an individual, which he began with
infancy and the Egyptians but did not pursue beyond the stage of
maturity, the human race having, in his judgment, just reached that
stage.71 At other times he proposed a scientific investigation of the
universe starting with the premise that man was a microcosm of the
universe; therefore any knowledge desired about the universe could
be obtained by carrying out experiments on man.72
The social-biological analogy is vulnerable at various points and
has been attacked in recent years a propos of Spengler and others,
and there is no point in repeating the same objections as applied to
Saint-Simon.73 In a sense, he was perhaps more justified in drawing
this analogy than many others who have done so, since he regarded
history strictly as a social science or " science of man," that is to say,
in his scheme, as an aspect of physiology. On the other hand, he ap-
plied the analogy more indiscriminately than most, extending it, for
example, to the history of religion: Saint-Simon regarded a religion
as just another institution which is subject to the life-cycle.74 At
best, he seems to be confusing religions with churches.
But if, in Saint-Simon's system, religions and all other institu-
tions were predetermined as to their behavior, they were by the same
token relative as to their merit. For if the development of the hu-
man race as a whole always kept pace with the development of its
particular institutions because both were governed by the same bio-
logical law, then the institutions of society were always such as to be
suited to society at that time. The very fact that an institution had
existed was a warranty of its appropriateness; Saint-Simon, who
thought the Enlightenment was outmoded, exceeded even Pope by
70 Oeuvres,XXIII, 35. 71 0. c., I, 177-180.
72
Oeuvres,XV, 80-81; cf. O. c., I, 175.
73For criticismof Saint-Simonon this matter, see Gouhier,La jeunessed'Auguste
Comte, II, 277, 279, and especially Emile Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-
neuviemesiecle (5th ed., Paris, 1903), 25-27. Cf. also Robert Flint, History of the
Philosophyof History (Edinburghand London,1893), 404.
74Oeuvres,XV, 115.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 327

asserting that whatever had ever been had been right.


Saint-Simon distributed his historical largesse generously. In the
ancient world, he saw merit, for example, in slavery, in Plato's and
Aristotle's metaphysical approach to science, and in Christianity; 75
he was prepared to admit that the Church Fathers were infallible
"for the period at which they lived." 76 In later times, too, religion
was beneficial considered in relation to its environment: Luther, for
example, rendered society a great service in attacking the papal
power, but his ideas were valuable only as criticism of the Catholic
Church, not in their own right. It was wrong to try to reestablish
primitive Christianity, because primitive Christianity was estab-
lished to destroy slavery, whereas in Luther's day slavery was non-
existent and hence Christianity needed a different aim, namely to
assure work to the proletariat.77 Machiavelli was " a great politician
in his own time." 78 Francis Bacon performed invaluable services in
his day, but would no longer take the same view today.79 Lagrange
and Laplace were not inferior to Newton; it was merely-and the
combination of determinism and relativism is highlighted here-that
"they are subject to a law of circumstances which allows them no
other employment of their talents but to carry out improve-
ments.. .." 80 The eighteenth-century Encyclopedia " was compiled
in a spirit good for its time, but bad for the present "; 81 Montes-
quieu, writing before the French Revolution, could not have the po-
litical insight that Saint-Simon's own generation had.82
It was in his view of the Middle Ages, however, that Saint-
Simon's relativism was most significant. The philosophers and his-
torians of the eighteenth century had, on the whole, condemned the
Middle Ages as church-ridden and superstitious, and hence unfit for
intellectual consumption by enlightened philosophers and their
readers. Saint-Simon, on the other hand, was enabled by his atti-
tude of historical relativism to avoid this failing and to appreciate
medieval culture in its own terms. For this achievement he has been
justly acclaimed; it proceeded, however, like his estimate of Luther
cited above, less from historical understanding than from his self-
imposed obligation to ratify the past, whatever it might have been.
Civilization, Saint-Simon declared, had taken uniquely important
steps in the medieval period, "which oblige us to regard the Middle
Ages as the veritable cradle of our modern civilization.... " 83 This

75 0. c., III, 188, 210, n. 1; II, 188-189. 76 0. c., III, 324.


77 0. ., III, 244, n. 1. For another peculiar relativist view of religion, see
Oeuvres,I, 38-39; and cf. O. c., I, 213, 223-224.
78 Oeuvres,XX, 226. 790. c., II, 189-190.
80 0. c., I, 141. 81 82
Oeuvres, XV, 148. 0. c., III, 134-135.

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328 WALTER M. SIMON

statement, which would be merely banal now, was in Saint-Simon's


day utterly novel. He justified it, however, by such apologies as this
for the " theocratic and feudal" political system which originated in
the Middle Ages, and which it was the task of his own generation to
extinguish:
It was impossibleto establish a better political system at that time, because,
on the one hand, all the knowledgethat men had being as yet superficialand
vague, generalmetaphysicsprovidedthe only principlesthat could serve as
guides to our medieval forebears,and thereforegeneral metaphysicianshad
to directthe scientificaffairsof society. On the other hand, the only means
by which a great people might increase in prosperity in those barbarous
times being conquest,soldiers had to be put in charge of directing the na-
tional affairs of the several states. Thus the fundamentalbasis of the old
political system was, on the one hand, a state of ignorancewhich produced
the result that deliberationson the means of providingsocial welfare were
not based on observation,but only on rough estimates [aper~us]; and, on
the other hand, an absence of skill in the arts and crafts which . . . left
[the peoples] with no other means of adding to their wealth than to seize
the raw materialsheld by other peoples.84
While this passage represented an improvement in principle over
the eighteenth-century view of the Middle Ages, it cannot be said to
reflect a really positive approach to the period either; Saint-Simon
tolerated the Middle Ages malgre lui. One cannot help feeling that
there is an adverse value-judgment about medieval culture attached
to this phrase: 85

The philosophersof the eighteenthcenturywere boundto be critical [as op-


posedto constructive],becausethe first thing to be done was to demonstrate
the shortcomingsof a system formed in a period of superstitionand bar-
barism ....
In fact, on occasion Saint-Simon abandoned all pretense of main-
taining a relativist point of view, particularly in the work in which
he was trying to promote a European union of parliamentary states.
The feudal constitution, he wrote, "is essentially bad because it op-
erates entirely to the advantage of the governors and to the detri-
ment of the governed." 86 He proposed to establish a constitution,
"strong in its own right, based on principles drawn from the nature
of things and independent of ephemeral beliefs and opinions...." 87
The merit of such a constitution would be "as certain, as absolute,
and as universal as that of a good syllogism."88 This was the parlia-
mentary constitution, "a form of government intrinsically good." 89
83
Oeuvres, XX, 73-74. 84 Ib., XX, 37-38. 85 lb., XX, 6.
86De la reorganisationde la societe
europeenne,26 (italics mine).
87 Ibid., 10. 88Ibid., 32. 89
Ibid., 43.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 329

It was not true, as Montesquieu claimed, that " each nation requires
a form of government peculiar to itself, since there can be only a
single good form of government, simply because there is only one
90
good method of arriving at one .... "
Saint-Simon also attacked relativism from another direction. It
might be true (disregarding the contrary sentiments just noted) that
institutions were to be judged on relative rather than absolute stand-
ards, depending on the society to which they belonged; but there
ought, according to Saint-Simon, to be no disagreement about the
merits of an institution within this framework:
The philosophers of the eighteenth century succeeded in obtaining general
assent to the proposition that everyone should be free to hold and to teach
to their children whichever religion they preferred. The philosophers of the
nineteenth century will inculcate the necessity of subjecting all children to
the study of the same code of secular morality, since a community of posi-
tive moral ideas is the only link that can unite men in society, and since,
after all, the perfecting of society means nothing but the perfecting of the
positive system of morality.91
This totalitarian edict of the positivist philosopher-king, extinguish-
ing any right to dissent on the part of the people of the positivist
state, was, of course, always logically implied in Saint-Simon's postu-
lation of necessary correspondence between a society and its institu-
tions. Saint-Simon found nothing terrifying in this prospect of a
unanimous population; that the truth would make men free was a
proposition taken for granted by rationalists from Voltaire to Marx,
and the corollary, that if necessary men had to be forced to be free
by being made to accept the truth, had been established by Rous-
seau. Saint-Simon, who ratified the past, even though it was super-
stitious and barbarous, because it had a part in his cosmic scheme,
was certainly not reluctant to ratify the future, which was the ulti-
mate destination of the cosmic scheme. For Saint-Simon like most
determinists-Spengler is an exception-constructed his cosmic
scheme with a happy ending; 92
or, perhaps, it would be more ac-
90Ibid., p. 39. It is possible that the anti-relativisticstrain particularlynota-
ble in this work is due partly to Saint-Simon'scollaborator,the historianAugustin
Thierry (cf. Gouhier,La jeunessed'AugusteComte,III, 84-85, 88), but Saint-Simon
cannot have raised any objectionsto it, in any event.
91Oeuvres,XVIII, 218, n. 1; cf. however,Oeuvres,XXI, 15, n. 1, where Saint-
Simon declaredthat the industrial (i.e., the positive) system would automatically
provide the highest possible degree of social freedom. The difficulty may lie in
definingthe word freedom.
92Symptomatically,Saint-Simon,unlike Spengler, sometimes applied the bio-
logical analogyto society without paying attention to the stage of declineand death
(cf. above). At other times, however, he speculated pessimistically about the

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330 WALTER M. SIMON

curate to say that Saint-Simon, like most optimists, was concerned


to find ways and means of assuring himself that his optimism was
justified. The attempt to convert hope into certainty is the whole
subject of Bury's classic work on The Idea of Progress.
VI
The prominent place occupied by Saint-Simon in Bury's book is
amply justified.3 Progress,in Saint-Simon'ssystem, was necessary
and universal; society and its institutions had steadily improved
throughouthistory, not excepting the Middle Ages, and " the golden
age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed in the past, lies be-
fore us." 94 History was about to reach its apotheosis; the next gen-
eration, he thought, would see it come to pass.95 Retrogressionwas
impossible. Progresswas not necessarilylinear; it might at differ-
ent times proceed by different methods, but it never ceased to
operate.97
The Idea of Progress,in fact, constituted the core and the central
inspiration of Saint-Simon's entire philosophy of history. He
naively revealed his basic moral commitment when he contrasted
" the false and discouragingidea that good precededevil " with " the
correct, comforting and powerfully stimulating idea that the labors
to which we dedicate ourselves will contribute to the welfare of our
children. . 98 ' Saint-Simon was a
"Romantic," with more than a
touch of mysticism, a missionary whose message was all the more
urgent because it was bound to be victorious.99 It was, in fact, his
temperament, his enthusiasm, his sense of urgency, that was his-
torically important, for it was his temperamentmore than the per-
suasivenessof his ideas that forced these on the attention of others,
above all of Comte, who were better able than he to construct from
them a coherent system.'1 He would never have been able to carry
on his work, which involved genuine personal sacrifices,without the
"comforting" Idea of Progress. Occasionallyhe even betrayed an
awareness of the emotional springs of his own, allegedly scientific
and objective, investigations: " What has brought me to such a state
eventual decline of mankind as a whole, and the eventual uninhabitabilityof the
universe (0. c., I, 234, 236). Cf. also Oeuvres,XV, 116-117.
93 On Saint-Simonand the Idea of Progress, see also Alengry, Essai sur la so-
ciologie,444-446. 94 0. c., III, 215.
95De la reorganisationde la societe europeenne,96-97; cf. Oeures, XXII, 60-61.
96 O. c.,
II, 129. 9 0. c., III, 374-375. 98 0. c, III, 240.
99On this point, see GeorgesBrunet, Le mysticismesocial de Saint-Simon
(Paris,
1925), passim; Roger Picard, Le romantismesocial (New York, 1944), pp. 290,
295, 298; Gouhier,La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte, II, 220-222, 273; and for per-
spective, the interestingsurvey of David OwenEvans, Social Romanticismin France
1830-1848 (Oxford,1951).
100On this matter I agree with
Gouhier,La jeunessed'AugusteComte, II, 3.

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SAINT-SIMON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 331
of distress is a passion for science and for the public weal, the desire
to find a peaceful way of ending the terriblecrisis in which all of so-
ciety is caught up." '01 In a short autobiographicalfragment Saint-
Simon wrote that "the highest degree of exaltation is necessary to
treat the great question of science in all its aspects."102 He even
conjuredup a vision of possiblemartyrdomfor those who joined him
in preachingpositivism and industrialism:
In the present state of civilization, this work will not expose you to great
dangers; but even were we to suffer the same persecutions as the early
Christians,that should not prevent us from performingour duty and com-
pleting our mission.103
And on his deathbed he spoke the words that might well have served
as his epitaph: Souvenez-vous que, pour faire quelque chose de
grand, il faut etre passionne,l4 which translates better in the nega-
tive: "Remember that no great deeds can be done without passion."
Sometimes,indeed, Saint-Simon appearedto be aware that there
was something unscientificabout his enterprise,and he even went so
far as to anticipate the objections of Marx that his system was
"utopian," and to attempt to defend himself against them. He
would use two kinds of arguments,he said, in favor of his scheme for
rule by the "industrialists": those which would point out its ad-
vantages, and those which would "tend to prove that, irrespectiveof
its advantages,it is in generalthe unavoidableresult of the courseof
civilizationin the last seven or eight centuries; from which it follows
that it is not utopian." The general tendency "to regard any im-
portant project for perfectingthe social order as utopian " was a re-
sult of "a false view of history" and of the widespreadfailure "to
considerthe great series of historical facts relating to the course of
civilization . . ." The very classificationof a project as utopian was
a product of ignorance; a proper knowledgeof history would elimi-
nate it and classify all projects as either bad, premature, or op-
portune.05
Thus Saint-Simontook refuge from the utopian label behind the
shield of history: the future state of mankind that he described,far
from being utopian, was in fact inevitable, a projectionof the past
clearly to be deduced from a study of history. Since, however,
Saint-Simon constructed history with a view to making the future
come out right, we must say rather that he used history and the
Idea of Progress in the service of his utopia.
Cornell University.
101
Oeuvres, I, 51. 102 Ib., XV, 80. 103 lb., XXII, 128. 104 Cited Ib., I, 121-122.
105Oeuvres, XX, 62-64, and cf. ibid., 178-179.
[Frank E. Manuel's The New World of Henri Saint-Simon (Harvard University
Press, 1956) had not appeared at the time of proofreading.]

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