thought that he might feel injured. He exhibited, however, a truly noble spirit, and simply remarked that, "Provided the work which I have brought into notice, and caused to be studied as highly useful to the moral and material interests of humanity, be executed, I will be the first to bless him by whom it is executed. Undoubtedly, it is but just that posterity should know that the initiation of that gigantic enterprise was taken by those whom the Old World could recognize only as Utopists, dreamers, or fools."*

The Saint-Simonians never reunited after the Egyptian expedition.

A considerable number were able to make themselves useful in that country on account of their engineering skill. Mehemet Ali, the viceroy, recognized their talents and employed them in numerous ways. One received a commission to found a Polytechnic School at Cairo, another was placed at the head of a school of artillery, two others were appointed professors in the school at Kauka, and several medical men received positions in the hospital. David delighted the Alexandrians with concerts, and Barrault charmed them by his eloquent lectures. An Egyptian paper declared of Barrault that "Alexandria, since the best days of its glory, has never heard within its walls a voice so eloquent or a poetry of language so harmonious." t

The most of these Saint-Simonians returned to France, and, like many of their former associates who had not left their native soil, acquired positions of prominence and influence.

Enfantin himself received a post as director of the

* Quoted by Booth.

+ Ibid.

Lyons Railway and became wealthy. He never lost faith in Saint-Simonism, but thought that as much had been done for the system as was then possible, since its doctrines had been proclaimed far and near, and were slowly leavening the mass of society.

Many of the principles taught by the Saint-Simonians must receive our hearty approbation. We sympathize with their endeavors to improve the lot of the poor and oppressed, and assent to them when they preach the dignity and sacredness of labor, the reverence due woman, and the duty of maintaining peace between nation and nation. When Chevalier proposes that the armies of Europe, "instead of being applied to the destruction of property and life, should be employed upon works of public utility,"* we are reminded that the coming of a time has been prophesied when "nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." †

Saint-Simon has ceased to be the prophet of a religious school, but he did not sacrifice life and happiness in vain. He still lives in the lives and actions of men, and to-day possesses an historical importance which has been well expressed in these words:

"Saint-Simon first taught us to consider the history of labor and property as an essential element of human development, and consequently to investigate the history of society.

"He first discerned clearly the separation of the two great classes of industrial society, and implanted bitter hatred in the consciousness of the lower classes. Saint

* Quoted by Booth, p. 170.

+ Isaiah ii. 4.

Simon's word that the party of the laborers would be formed, has been fulfilled. Saint-Simonism is the first expression of the proletariat.

"He first represented social reform as the only true function of government.

66

Finally, he first brought forward the question of (inheritance, the question upon which the entire future of the social form of Europe will rest during the next two generations.

"Thus through Saint-Simon is society, in its power, its elements, and its contradictions, for the first time half understood, half vaguely conjectured. He is the boundary of a new era in France. He left the beaten track and laid down his life in discovering and opening for society a new path. In it we have as yet taken only a few steps, and no human eye is able to discern the goal whither we are tending.'

* Vide Lorenz von Stein, "Geschichte der Socialen Bewegung in Frankreich" (Leipzig, 1850), Bd. ii. SS. 226, 227. The translation is abridged and is rather free in places.

CHAPTER V.

FOURIER.

"* Lorenz

IN his "Social Movements in France von Stein uses these words, in comparing Saint-Simon and Fourier: "While Saint-Simon was sacrificing his life in Paris in his efforts to attain an unknown and only vaguely conjectured goal, and while his school was struggling against foes from within and without, there lived in another part of France a man who, without knowing Saint-Simon, was taking an essentially different route towards the same goal. This man was Charles Fourier. . . . Never has any land at the same time produced two men of such importance in the history of society."

These two men together constitute one whole. Each was required as a complement of the other. The one started in his career as a man of wealth and social eminence, the other as a man of the people. The one observed society, studied its history, its development, and sought to find therein a clew to guide him in his work of regenerating the world, morally and economically; the other, regarding the past as such a series of blunders as to afford no proper basis for future formations, searched the depths of his own

*Bd. ii. S. 228.

That is, of so much importance to one writing or studying the history of social movements.

consciousness, and discovered a law which furnished premises, enabling him to construct deductively an ideal and perfect society, and to explain with mathematical accuracy the past, present, and future of the entire universe.

Saint-Simon was a man of impulse and feeling; Fourier was a man of the understanding and logic. The former founded a religion; the latter a science.

Charles Fourier was born in 1772 in Besançon. He came of an ordinary family and represented the middle-class. His father was a cloth-merchant in his native city, and he himself spent the greater part of his life in mercantile pursuits of one kind or another. Fourier seems to have been a bright boy, for when only eleven years of age he took prizes for excellence in French and Latin. He liked the study of geography, spending a considerable part of his pocket-money for maps and globes, and was passionately fond of music and flowers. It is said that he was himself a good musician. His mechanical ability was remarkable enough to attract attention at an early period in his life. As a commercial traveller he visited Germany and Holland, and was thus able to gratify his desire to see the world. Upon the death of his father, he inherited about one hundred thousand francs at an early age, invested the money in foreign trade, and lost it in the siege of Lyons in 1793, during the Reign of Terror, when his bales of cotton were used to form barricades and his provisions to feed the soldiers. But Fourier's misfortunes did not end here. He was taken prisoner, and kept in confinement for some time, expecting daily to be led forth to execution. Release, however, enabled him to join the army, for which he had some taste. It is, indeed, stated that he was able to make sugges