If I drew my doctrine of Union in part from the eclecticism of Cousin,
I drew my views of the Church and of the reorganization of the
race from the Saint-Simonians,--a philo-sophico-religious or a
politico-philosophical sect that sprung up in France under the
Restoration, and figured largely for a year or two under the monarchy of
July. Their founder was Claude Henri, Count de Saint-Simon, a descendant
of the Due de Saint-Simon, well known as the author of the 'Memoirs.' He
was born in 1760, entered the army at the age of seventeen, and the
year after came to this country, where he served with distinction in our
Revolutionary War under Bouillié. After the peace of 1783 he devoted two
years to the study of our people and institutions, and then returned to
France. Hardly had he returned before he found himself in the midst of
the French Revolution, which he regarded as the practical application of
the principles or theories adopted by the reformers of the sixteenth
century and popularized by the philosophers of the eighteenth. He looked
upon that revolution, we are told, as having only a destructive
mission--necessary, important, but inadequate to the wants of humanity;
and instead of being carried away by it as were most of the young men of
his age and his principles, he set himself at work to amass materials
for the erection of a new social edifice on the ruins of the old, which
should stand and improve in solidity, strength, grandeur, and
beauty forever.
The way he seems to have taken to amass these materials was to engage
with a partner in some grand speculations for the accumulation of
wealth,--and speculations too, it is said, not of the most honorable or
even the most honest character. His plans succeeded for a time, and he
became very rich, as did many others in those troublous times; but he
finally met with reverses, and lost all but the wrecks of his fortune.
He then for a number of years plunged into all manner of vice, and
indulged to excess in every species of dissipation; not, we are told,
from love of vice, any inordinate desire, or any impure affection, but
for the holy purpose of preparing himself by his experience for the
great work of redeeming man and securing for him a Paradise on earth.
Having gained all that experience could give him in the department of
vice, he then proceeded to consult the learned professors of L'École
Polytechnique for seven or ten years, to make himself master of science,
literature, and the fine arts in all their departments, and to place
himself at the level of the last attainments of the race. Thus qualified
to be the founder of a new social organization, he wrote several books,
in which he deposited the germs of his ideas, or rather the germs of the
future; most of which have hitherto remained unpublished.
But now that he was so well qualified for his work he found himself a
beggar, and had as yet made only a single disciple. He was reduced to
despair and attempted to take his own life; but failed, the ball only
grazing his sacred forehead. His faithful disciple was near him, saved
him, and aroused him into life and hope. When he recovered he found that
he had fallen into a gross error. He had been a materialist, an atheist,
and had discarded all religious ideas as long since outgrown by the
human race. He had proposed to organize the human race with materials
furnished by the senses alone, and by the aid of positive science. He
owns his fault, and conceives and brings forth a new Christianity,
consigned to a small pamphlet entitled 'Nouveau Christianisme,' which
was immediately published. This done, his mission was ended, and he
died May 19th, 1825, and I suppose was buried.
Saint-Simon, the preacher of a new Christianity, very soon attracted
disciples, chiefly from the pupils of the Polytechnic School; ardent and
lively young men, full of enthusiasm, brought up without faith in the
gospel and yet unable to live without religion of some sort. Among the
active members of the sect were at one time Pierre Leroux, Jules and
Michel Chevalier, Lerminier, [and] my personal friend Dr. Poyen, who
initiated me and so many others in New England into the mysteries of
animal magnetism. Dr. Poyen was, I believe, a native of the island of
Guadeloupe: a man of more ability than he usually had credit for, of
solid learning, genuine science, and honest intentions. I knew him well
and esteemed him highly. When I knew him his attachment to the new
religion was much weakened, and he often talked to me of the old Church,
and assured me that he felt at times that he must return to her bosom. I
owe him many hints which turned my thoughts toward Catholic principles,
and which, with God's grace, were of much service to me. These and many
others were in the sect; whose chiefs, after the death of its founder,
were--Bazard, a Liberal and a practical man, who killed himself; and
Enfantin, who after the dissolution of the sect sought employment in the
service of the Viceroy of Egypt, and occupies now some important post in
connection with the French railways.
The sect began in 1826 by addressing the working classes; but their
success was small. In 1829 they came out of their narrow circle, assumed
a bolder tone, addressed themselves to the general public, and became in
less than eighteen months a Parisian _mode_. In 1831 they purchased the
Globe newspaper, made it their organ, and distributed gratuitously five
thousand copies daily. In 1832 they had established a central
propagandism in Paris, and had their missionaries in most of the
departments of France. They attacked the hereditary peerage, and it
fell; they seemed to be numerous and strong, and I believed for a moment
in their complete success. They called their doctrine a religion, their
ministers priests, and their organization a church; and as such they
claimed to be recognized by the State, and to receive from it a
subvention as other religious denominations [did]. But the courts
decided that Saint-Simonism was not a religion and its ministers were
not religious teachers. This decision struck them with death. Their
prestige vanished. They scattered, dissolved in thin air, and went off,
as Carlyle would say, into endless vacuity, as do sooner or later all
shams and unrealities.
Saint-Simon himself, who as presented to us by his disciples is a
half-mythic personage, seems, so far as I can judge by those of his
writings that I have seen, to have been a man of large ability and
laudable intentions; but I have not been able to find any new or
original thoughts of which he was the indisputable father. His whole
system, if system he had, is summed up in the two maxims "Eden is before
us, not behind us" (or the Golden Age of the poets is in the future, not
in the past), and "Society ought to be so organized as to tend in the
most rapid manner possible to the continuous moral, intellectual, and
physical amelioration of the poorer and more numerous classes." He
simply adopts the doctrine of progress set forth with so much flash
eloquence by Condorcet, and the philanthropic doctrine with regard to
the laboring classes, or the people, defended by Barbeuf and a large
section of the French Revolutionists. His religion was not so much as
the Theophilanthropy attempted to be introduced by some members of the
French Directory: it admitted God in name, and in name did not deny
Jesus Christ, but it rejected all mysteries, and reduced religion to
mere socialism. It conceded that Catholicity had been the true Church
down to the pontificate of Leo X., because down to that time its
ministers had taken the lead in directing the intelligence and labors of
mankind, had aided the progress of civilization, and promoted the
well-being of the poorer and more numerous classes. But since Leo X.,
who made of the Papacy a secular principality, it had neglected its
mission, had ceased to labor for the poorer and more numerous classes,
had leagued itself with the ruling orders, and lent all its influence to
uphold tyrants and tyranny. A new church was needed; a church which
should realize the ideal of Jesus Christ, and tend directly and
constantly to the moral, physical, and social amelioration of the poorer
and more numerous classes,--in other words, the greatest happiness in
this life of the greatest number, the principle of Jeremy Bentham and
his Utilitarian school.
His disciples enlarged upon the hints of the master, and attributed to
him ideas which he never entertained. They endeavored to reduce his
hints to a complete system of religion, philosophy, and social
organization. Their chiefs, I have said, were Amand Bazard and
Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin....
Bazard took the lead in what related to the external, political, and
economical organization, and Enfantin in what regarded doctrine and
worship. The philosophy or theology of the sect or school was derived
principally from Hegel, and was a refined Pantheism. Its Christology was
the unity, not union, of the divine and human; and the Incarnation
symbolized the unity of God and man, or the Divinity manifesting himself
in humanity, and making humanity substantially divine,--the very
doctrine in reality which I myself had embraced even before I had heard
of the Saint-Simonians, if not before they had published it. The
religious organization was founded on the doctrine of the progressive
nature of man, and the maxim that all institutions should tend in the
most speedy and direct manner possible to the constant amelioration of
the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of the poorer and more
numerous classes. Socially men were to be divided into three
classes,--artists, _savans_, and industrials or working men,
corresponding to the psychological division of the human faculties. The
soul has three powers or faculties,--to love, to know, and to act. Those
in whom the love-faculty is predominant belong to the class of artists,
those in whom the knowledge-faculty is predominant belong to the class
of _savans_, the scientific and the learned, and in fine, those in whom
the act-faculty predominates belong to the industrial class. This
classification places every man in the social category for which he is
fitted, and to which he is attracted by his nature. These several
classes are to be hierarchically organized under chiefs or priests, who
are respectively priests of the artists, of the scientific, and of the
industrials, and are, priests and all, to be subjected to a supreme
Father, _Père Supréme_, and a Supreme Mother, _Mère Supréme_.
The economical organization is to be based on the maxims, "To each one
according to his capacity," and "To each capacity according to its
work." Private property is to be retained, but its transmission by
inheritance or testamentary disposition must be abolished. The property
is to be held by a tenure resembling that of gavel-kind. It belongs to
the community, and the priests, chiefs, or brehons, as the Celtic tribes
call them, to distribute it for life to individuals, and to each
individual according to his capacity. It was supposed that in this way
the advantages of both common and individual property might be secured.
Something of this prevailed originally in most nations, and a
reminiscence of it still exists in the village system among the Slavonic
tribes of Russia and Poland; and nearly all jurists maintain that the
testamentary right by which a man disposes of his goods after his
natural death, as well as that by which a child inherits from the
parent, is a municipal, not a natural right.
The most striking feature in the Saint-Simonian scheme was the rank and
position it assigned to woman. It asserted the absolute equality of the
sexes, and maintained that either sex is incomplete without the other.
Man is an incomplete individual without woman. Hence a religion, a
doctrine, a social institution founded by one sex alone is incomplete,
and can never be adequate to the wants of the race or a definite order.
This idea was also entertained by Frances Wright, and appears to be
entertained by all our Women's Rights folk of either sex. The old
civilization was masculine, not male and female as God made man. Hence
its condemnation. The Saint-Simonians, therefore, proposed to place by
the side of their sovereign Father at the summit of their hierarchy a
sovereign Mother. The man to be sovereign Father they found; but a woman
to be sovereign Mother, _Mère Suprême_, they found not. This caused
great embarrassment, and a split between Bazard and Enfantin. Bazard was
about marrying his daughter, and he proposed to place her marriage under
the protection of the existing French laws. Enfantin opposed his doing
so, and called it a sinful compliance with the prejudices of the world.
The Saint-Simonian society, he maintained, was a State, a kingdom within
itself, and should be governed by its own laws and its own chiefs
without any recognition of those without. Bazard persisted, and had the
marriage of his daughter solemnized in a legal manner, and for aught I
know, according to the rites of the Church. A great scandal followed.
Bazard charged Enfantin with denying Christian marriage, and with
holding loose notions on the subject. Enfantin replied that he neither
denied nor affirmed Christian marriage; that in enacting the existing
law on the subject man alone had been consulted, and he could not
recognize it as law till woman had given her consent to it. As yet the
society was only provisionally organized, inasmuch as they had not yet
found the _Mère Suprême_. The law on marriage must emanate conjointly
from the Supreme Father and the Supreme Mother, and it would be
irregular and a usurpation for the Supreme Father to undertake alone to
legislate on the subject. Bazard would not submit, and went out and shot
himself. Most of the politicians abandoned the association; and Père
Enfantin, almost in despair, dispatched twelve apostles to
Constantinople to find in the Turkish harems the Supreme Mother. After a
year they returned and reported that they were unable to find her; and
the society, condemned by the French courts as immoral, broke up, and
broke up because no woman could be found to be its mother. And so they
ended, having risen, flourished, and decayed in less than a
single decade.
The points in the Saint-Simonian movement that arrested my attention and
commanded my belief were what it will seem strange to my readers could
ever have been doubted,--its assertion of a religious future for the
human race, and that religion, in the future as well as in the past,
must have an organization, and a hierarchical organization. Its
classification of men according to the predominant psychological faculty
in each, into artists, savans, and industrials, struck me as very well;
and the maxims "To each according to his capacity," and "To each
capacity according to its works," as evidently just, and desirable if
practicable. The doctrine of the Divinity in Humanity, of progress, of
no essential antagonism between the spiritual and the material, and of
the duty of shaping all institutions for the speediest and continuous
moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of the poorer and more
numerous classes, I already held. I was rather pleased than otherwise
with the doctrine with regard to property, and thought it a decided
improvement on that of a community of goods. The doctrine with regard to
the relation of the sexes I rather acquiesced in than approved. I was
disposed to maintain, as the Indian said, that "woman is the weaker
canoe," and to assert my marital prerogatives; but the equality of the
sexes was asserted by nearly all my friends, and I remained generally
silent on the subject, till some of the admirers of Harriet Martineau
and Margaret Fuller began to scorn equality and to claim for woman
superiority. Then I became roused, and ventured to assert my
masculine dignity.
It is remarkable that most reformers find fault with the Christian law
of marriage, and propose to alter the relations which God has
established both in nature and the gospel between the sexes; and this is
generally the rock on which they split. Women do not usually admire men
who cast off their manhood or are unconscious of the rights and
prerogatives of the stronger sex; and they admire just as little those
"strong-minded women" who strive to excel only in the masculine virtues.
I have never been persuaded that it argues well for a people when its
women are men and its men women. Yet I trust I have always honored and
always shall honor woman. I raise no question as to woman's equality or
inequality with man, for comparisons cannot be made between things not
of the same kind. Woman's sphere and office in life are as high, as
holy, as important as man's, but different; and the glory of both man
and woman is for each to act well the part assigned to each by
Almighty God.
The Saint-Simonian writings made me familiar with the idea of a
hierarchy, and removed from my mind the prejudices against the Papacy
generally entertained by my countrymen. Their proposed organization, I
saw, might be good and desirable if their priests, their Supreme Father
and Mother, could really be the wisest, the best,--not merely the
nominal but the real chiefs of society. Yet what security have I that
they will be? Their power was to have no limit save their own wisdom and
love, but who would answer for it that these would always be an
effectual limit? How were these priests or chiefs to be designated and
installed in their office? By popular election? But popular election
often passes over the proper man and takes the improper. Then as to the
assignment to each man of a capital proportioned to his capacity to
begin life with, what certainty is there that the rules of strict right
will be followed? that wrong will not often be done, both voluntarily
and involuntarily? Are your chiefs to be infallible and impeccable?
Still the movement interested me, and many of its principles took firm
hold of me and held me for years in a species of mental thraldom;
insomuch that I found it difficult, if not impossible, either to refute
them or to harmonize them with other principles which I also held, or
rather which held me, and in which I detected no unsoundness. Yet I
imbibed no errors from the Saint-Simonians; and I can say of them as of
the Unitarians,--they did me no harm, but were in my fallen state the
occasion of much good to me.