466 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



35. 

 Saint- 

 Simon. 



entire reconstruction of society. They broke with the 

 historical past and desired to institute a new Order on 

 the foundation of the natural rights of man ; but some 

 of the representatives of this line of thought are inclined 

 to consider the natural rights of man — which should 

 form the laws of society in the same way as the natural 

 properties of things form the laws of nature — to be of 

 higher, of Divine origin. That identification of laws of 

 nature and laws of society which has done so much 

 mischief in both directions — i.e., in the philosophy of 

 nature ^ as well as in the philosophy of society — was 

 familiar already to Montesquieu. 



One of the principal leaders, and by far the most 

 influential apostle of socialism during the first half of 

 the nineteenth century, was the Count de Saint-Simon 

 (1760-1825), of noble family descended from that Duke 

 who left us the celebrated ' Memoires.' After having 

 quarrelled with his father and lost his fortune and 

 elevated social position, he passed what the French call 

 une jeunesse Men orageiise, during which scientific and 

 commercial interests went hand in hand with a dis- 

 orderly and cynical way of living. He combined with 

 the philosophical and abstract interest, which he in- 

 herited from the philosophers of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, a practical knowledge of men and affairs. Science 

 and humanity were his leading ideas, as they had been 

 those of the encyclopaedists ; but he was less systematic 

 and timid, more daring and practical than they had 



can never be established on a 

 durable basis so long as the dis- 

 coveries of scientific truth in all its 

 departments are suppressed, or in- 



correctly appreciated, or socially 

 misapplied" {loc. cit., p. 301). 



^ See supra, vol. iii. p. 572 

 sqq. 



