OF SOCIETY. 



467 



been. He was not without the genuine religious, even 

 a mystical, turn, but his religion seemed to be satisfied 

 with a Ruler of the Universe formed somewhat on the 

 mistaken French interpretation of a well-known passage 

 in Newton's ' Principia ' reminding us of the lines of 

 Goethe 



What were a God who only pushed the world 

 And in a circle round His finger twirled 1 



In fact, the law of attraction or gravitation seemed to 

 him the ultimate and sufficient law explaining the 

 universal order of things ; l this reminds us again of 

 the well-known Treatise of Father Boscovich. 2 



Saint-Simon believes both in a spiritual power and 

 in a temporal power in the State, but he proposes 

 to transfer the former from the priests to the men 

 of science and the latter from the nobles to the pro- 

 pertied class. These have therefore, as M. Ferraz 

 says, not much to fear from this nascent social- 

 ism. To those who are not proprietors, he assigns the 

 right and duty of electing the savants who have to 

 wield the spiritual power. But the real savants are the 

 astronomers and biologists, not the moralists and meta- 

 physicians. " This means," as M. Ferraz continues, " in 

 unmistakable terms that the philosophical and moral 

 sciences have no value, and count only from the day 

 when they are founded upon the physical and natural 

 sciences. This idea, which became the main principle 



1 "Je crois en Dieu. Je crois 

 que Dieu a cre"e 1'univers. Je crois 

 que Dieu a soumis 1'univers a la 

 loi cle la gravitation" (quoted from 

 'Nouvelle Encyclopedic' (1810) by 



Georges Weill in ' Saint-Simon et 

 son CEuvre' (1894, p. 53). 



2 See supra, vol. i. p. 356 sqq., 

 and vol. ii. pp. 29, 351. 



