The Producteur, which had appeared first weekly, and then monthly, came to an end in October 1826. While this meant the cessation for three years of all public activity of the group, there had already been created a common doctrine which could serve as the basis for intensive propaganda by word of mouth. It was at this time that they had their first great successes among the students of the Ecole polytechnique, to which they specially directed their efforts. As Enfantin later expressed it: ``The Ecole polytechnique must be the channel through which our ideas will spread through society. It is the milk which we have sucked at our beloved school which must nourish the generations to come. It is there that we have learned the positive language and the methods of research and demonstration which today secure the advance of the political sciences.''14.13 The success of these efforts was such that within a few years the group consisted of some hundred engineers with only a sprinkling of doctors and a few artists and bankers, who were mostly left over from Saint-Simon's immediate disciples, or, like the brothers Pereire, the cousins of Rodrigues, or his friend Gustave d'Eichthal, were personally related to them.
Among the first of the young engineers to join the movement were the two friends Abel Transon and Jules Lechevalier,14.14 who through their knowledge of German philosophy helped to give the Saint-Simonian doctrines a certain Hegelian veneer which later proved so important in helping their success in Germany. A short time after followed Michel Chevalier, later famous as an economist, and Henri Fournel, who, to join the movement, resigned a position as director of the Creuzot works and later became Saint-Simon's biographer. Hippolyte Camot, although himself never a pupil of the Ecole polytechnique, since he had spent his youth with his father in exile, must also be counted with this group, not only as the son of Lazare, but still more as the brother of the polytechnician Sadi Carnot, the ``founder of the science of energy,'' discoverer of the ``Carnot cycle,'' the ideal of technical efficiency, with whom he lived in these years while the latter developed his famous theories and at the same time preserved a lively although never active interest in the political and social discussions of his friends.14.15 At least by tradition and connections, if not by training, Hippolyte Carnot was as much an engineer as the others.
For a time the apartment of the Carnots was the place where Enfantin and Bazard taught an ever increasing number of young enthusiasts.14.16 But toward the end of 1828 they had outgrown that accommodation and it was decided that a more formal oral exposition of their views should be given to a larger audience. It is probable that this was suggested by the success of a similar experiment by Comte, who in 1826 had begun to expound his Positive Philosophy to a distinguished audience, including, besides such scholars as Alexander von Humboldt and Poinsot, also Carnot, who had been sent there by Enfantin to receive his first instruction in Saint-Simonism.14.17 Although Comte's attempt had soon been cut short by the mental affliction which interrupted his work for three years, it had attracted sufficient attention to invite imitation.
The course of lectures which the Saint-Simonians arranged in 1829 and 1830, in the form in which it has come down to us as the two parts of the Doctrine de Saint-Simon, Exposition, 14.18 is by far the most important document produced by Saint-Simon or his pupils and one of the great landmarks in the history of socialism which deserves to be much better known than it is outside France. If it is not the Bible of socialism, as it has been called by a French scholar,14.19 it deserves at least to be regarded as its Old Testament. And in some respects it did indeed carry socialist thought further than was done for nearly a hundred years after its publication.