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I

More surprising than anything else in Saint-Simon's career is the great fascination that toward the end of his life he exercised on younger men, some of them intellectually his superiors, who yet for years were satisfied to devil for him, to recognize him as their leader, and to bring coherence and order into the thoughts thrown out by him, and whose whole intellectual careers were determined by his influence. Of none other is this more true than of Auguste Comte, whatever in later life he may have said about ``the unfortunate personal influence that overshadowed my earliest efforts'' or the ``depraved juggler,'' as whom he had come to regard Saint-Simon.13.1

It is a vain attempt to distinguish precisely what part of the work of the period of seven years during which they collaborated is Saint-Simon's and what is Comte's --particularly as it seems likely that in conversation Saint-Simon was much more stimulating and inspiring than in his writings. Yet so much confusion has been caused about the actual relationships by some historians constantly attributing to Saint-Simon thoughts which occur first in works which appeared under his name but are known to have been written by Comte, while others have tried to vindicate Comte's complete independence of thought, that we must exercise some care about what in itself may not be a matter of great consequence.

Auguste Comte was nineteen years of age when in August 1817 Saint-Simon offered him the position of secretary. The young man had little more than a year before been sent down from the Ecole polytechnique, after a brilliant career and just before the final examination, as the ringleader in an insubordination. Since then he had earned his living as a mathematical coach, at the same time preparing himself for an appointment in America which did not materialize, and had translated a textbook on geometry from the English. During the same period he had steeped himself in the writings of Lagrange and Monge, of Montesquieu and Condorcet, and more recently had taken some interest in political economy.

This seems to have been the qualification on which Saint-Simon, anxious to develop his ``science of production,'' engaged him to write the further parts of L'Industrie. 13.2 In any case, the new disciple was able to write in the three months or so during which he remained Saint-Simon's paid secretary the whole of the four parts of the third and the first and only part of the fourth volume of that publication.13.3

On the whole his contribution is merely a development of the doctrines of his new master which the disciple pushes somewhat further to their logical conclusions. The third volume is largely devoted to problems of the philosophy of history, the gradual transition from polytheism to the positive era, from the absolute monarchy through the transitory stage of the parliamentary liberal state to the new positive organization, and, above all, from the old ``celestial'' to the new terrestrial and positive morals.13.4Only now are we able to watch these transitions because we have learned to understand the laws to which they are subject.13.5All the institutions existing at any time, being an application of the ruling social philosophy, have their relative justification.13.6 And anticipating one of the main features of his later philosophy, Comte sums up in the only sentence of this early work which he would later acknowledge: ``There is nothing good and nothing bad absolutely speaking; everything is relative, this is the only absolute statement.''13.7

No less alarming to Saint-Simon's supporters than the praise of ``terrestrial morals'' were the ``views on property and legislation'' contained in volume four of L'Industrie. Although in general still mainly utilitarian (and consciously Benthamite)13.8 in its insistence on the variability of the contents of property rights and the need to adapt them to the conditions of the time,13.9 it strikes a new note in emphasizing that, while parliamentary government is merely a form, it is the constitution of property which is the fundamental thing, and that it is therefore ``this constitution which is the real basis of the social edifice 13.10 -- implying that with the revision of the law of property the whole social order can he changed.13.11

The third volume of L'Industrie was hardly completed when most of its liberal supporters withdrew from it after a public protest against the incursion of the journal into a field outside its professed program and against its advocacy of principles ``which were destructive of all social order and incompatible with liberty.''13.12 Although Saint-Simon attempted a lame apology in the introduction of the fourth volume and promised to return to the original plan, the first issue of the new volume was also the last. The funds were exhausted and L'Industrie, and with it Comte's paid position, came to an end.


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Next: II Up: Social Physics: Saint-Simon and Previous: Social Physics: Saint-Simon and   Contents