The visit to Switzerland was also the occasion of Saint-Simon's first publication. In 1803 there appeared in Geneva the Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporains, 12.6 a little tract in which the Voltairean cult of Newton was revived in a fantastically exaggerated form. It begins by proposing that a subscription should be opened before the tomb of Newton to finance the project of a great ``Council of Newton'' for which each subscriber is to have the right of nominating three mathematicians, three physicists, three chemists, three physiologists, three littérateurs, three painters, and three musicians.12.7The twenty-one scholars and artists thus elected by the whole of mankind, and presided over by the mathematician who received the largest number of votes,12.8 should become in their collective capacity the representatives of God on earth,12.9 who would deprive the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, and the priests of their office because they do not understand the divine science which God has entrusted to them and which some day will again turn earth into paradise.12.10 In the divisions and sections into which the supreme Council of Newton will divide the world, similar local Councils of Newton will be created which will have to organize worship, research and instruction in and around the temples of Newton which will be built everywhere.12.11
Why this new ``social organization,'' as Saint-Simon calls it for the first time in an unpublished manuscript of the same period?12.12 Because we are still governed by people who do not understand the general laws that rule the universe. ``It is necessary that the physiologists chase from their company the philosophers, moralists, and metaphysicians just as the astronomers have chased out the astrologers and the chemists have chased out the alchemists.''12.13 The physiologists are competent in the first instance because ``we are organized bodies; and it is by regarding our social relationships as physiological phenomena that I have conceived the project which I present to you.''12.14
But the physiologists themselves are not yet quite scientific enough. They have yet to discover how their science can reach the perfection of astronomy by basing itself on the single law to which God has subjected the universe, the law of universal gravitation.12.15 It will be the task of the Council of Newton by exercising its spiritual power to make people understand this law. Its tasks, however, go far beyond that. It will not only have to vindicate the rights of the men of genius, the scientists, the artists and all the people with liberal views;12.16 it will also have to reconcile the second class of people, the proprietors, and the third, the people without property, to whom Saint-Simon addresses himself specially as his friends and whom he exhorts to accept this proposal which is the only way to prevent that ``struggle which, from the nature of things, necessarily always exists between'' the two classes.12.17
All this is revealed to Saint-Simon by the Lord himself, who announces to His prophet that He has placed Newton at His side and entrusted him with the enlightenment of the inhabitants of all planets. The instruction culminates in the famous passage from which much of later Saint-Simonian doctrine springs: ``All men will work; they will regard themselves as laborers attached to one workshop whose efforts will be directed to guide human intelligence according to my divine foresight. The supreme Council of Newton will direct their works.''12.18 Saint-Simon has no qualms about the means that will be employed to enforce the instructions of his central planning body: ``Anybody who does not obey the orders will be treated by the others as a quadruped.''12.19
In condensing we had to try and bring some order into the incoherent and rambling jumble of ideas which this first pamphlet of Saint-Simon represents. It is the outpouring of a megalomaniac visionary who sprouts halfdigested ideas, who all the time is trying to attract the attention of the world to his unappreciated genius and to the necessity of financing his works, and who does not forget to provide for himself as the founder of the new religion great power and the chairmanship of all the councils for life.12.20