Soon after the publication of this first work, Saint-Simon found that his funds were entirely exhausted and the next few years he spent in increasing misery, importuning his old friends and associates with demands for money and, it appears, not stopping short of blackmail. Even his appeals to now powerful friends of the past, such as the Comte de Ségur, Napoleon's grand maître des cérémonies, procured him in the end no more than the miserable and humiliating position of copyist in a pawnbroking institution. After six months of this, weakened and ill, he met his former valet, who took him into his house. For four years (1806-10) until his death that devoted servant provided for all the needs of his ex-master and even defrayed the cost of printing Saint-Simon's next work.
It seems that during this period Saint-Simon read
more extensively than ever before; at least the Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIX siècle12.21 shows a
wide although still very superficial and ill-digested
knowledge of the scientific literature of the period. The
main theme is still the same, but the methods proposed
have somewhat changed. Before science can organize society, science itself must be organized.12.22 The Council of
Newton therefore now becomes the editorial committee
of a great new Encyclopaedia which is to systematize and
unify all knowledge: ``We must examine and coordinate
it all from the point of view of physicism.''12.23 This physicism is not merely a new general scientific method; it
is to be a new religion, even if at first only for the educated classes.12.24 It is to be the third great stage in the
evolution of religion from polytheism though ``deism''12.25to physicism. But although the growth of physicism has
now been under way for eleven hundred years,12.26 the
victory is not yet complete. The reason is that the work
of the past, particularly that of the French Encyclopedists, was merely critical and destructive.12.27 It is for the
great Emperor Napoleon, ``the scientific chief of humanity as he is its political chief,'' ``the most positive
man of the age,'' to organize the scientific system in a
new encyclopedia worthy of his name.12.28 Under his direction the ``physicist clergy'' in the atelier scientifique will
create a work that will organize physicism and found,
on reasoning and observation, the principles which for
ever will serve as guides to humanity.12.29 The greatest man
after the emperor, and that is ``undoubtedly the man who
admires him most profoundly,'' offers himself for the
task as his ``scientific lieutenant, as a second Descartes,
under whose leadership the works of the new school will
be prodigious.''12.30
It need hardly be said that this work is no more systematic than the first. After a vain attempt at coherent exposition it soon becomes admittedly a collection of disjointed notes from Saint-Simon's portefeuille. He abandoned the ambitious plan outlined at the beginning, as he himself explains in the sketch of his autobiography, because of lack of funds, or as he admits elsewhere, because he was not yet ripe for the task.12.31 Yet, with all its defects, the work is a remarkable document. It combines, for the first time, nearly all the characteristics of the modern scientistic organizer. The enthusiasm for physicism (it is now called physicalism) and the use of ``physical language,''12.32 the attempt to ``unify science'' and to make it the basis of morals, the contempt for all `theological,'' that is anthropomorphic, reasoning,12.33 the desire to organize the work of others, particularly by editing a great encyclopedia, and the wish to plan life in general on scientific lines are all present. One can sometunes believe that one is reading a contemporary work of an H. G. Wells, a Lewis Mumford, or an Otto Neurath. Nor is the complaint missing about the intellectual crisis, the moral chaos, which must be overcome by the imposition of a new scientific creed. The book is indeed, more than the Lettres d'un habitant de Genève, the first and most important document of that ``counterrevolution of science,'' as their fellow reactionary Bonald called the movement,12.34 which later found more open expression in Saint-Simon's avowed desire to ``terminate the revolution'' by conscious reorganization of society. It is the beginning of both modern positivism and modern socialism, which, thus, both began as definitely reactionary and authoritarian movements.
The Introduction, addressed to his fellow scientists, was not published but merely printed in a small number of copies for distribution among the members of the Institut. But although the great scientists to whom he sent it took no notice, he continued to appeal to them for assistance in a number of smaller tracts of a similar character. We can pass over the various minor writings of the next few years, which were mainly concerned with the project of an encyclopedia; during this time we find, gradually added to the megalomania of the prophet, the characteristic persecution mania of the verkannte Genie which expressed itself in violent abuse of the formerly so admired Laplace, whom he suspected of being responsible for his neglect.12.35