feudal noble, of the military leader, even of the priest in the old sense, was gone. The day of the industrial chief, of the savant, of the man of letters, was come. The true aim henceforth of man in society, the true end of the social union, was the production of things useful to life-"the exploitation of the globe by association," as he expressed it in more general and grandiloquent terms. This being so, the chiefs of production, the leaders of industry and of science, which on its practical side is the handmaid of industry, should be the leaders of society, and should also form the Government. Non-producers, whether nobles, landed proprietors, rentiers, priests, so far as they taught erroneous morality, should be excluded. In "l'Organisateur" (1819) he gives a plan, half practical, half Utopian, for realizing this social aim. He proposes three chambers, one of Invention, one of Examination, and a third called the Executive Chamber. The members of the first and second were to consist of engineers, savants, men of letters, artists; they were to be paid by the State, but they were to be merely consultative bodies: the members of the third were to be the great industrial leaders, capitalists, and bankers. To these last he gave the executive power, and the control of taxation and expenditure; and by so doing, as M. Paul Janet says, he gave them the real temporal power. As in Comte's "System of Positive Polity," the capitalists-and particularly the money capitalists, the great financiers and bankers,were to rule; though St. Simon wishes their functions reduced as much as possible by submitting their measures to the superior scientific light of the other

chambers. To the savants, supplemented by literary men and artists, is virtually left the spiritual power.

But in the "Système Industriel" (1821) a change is made. The savants and the men of letters are disestablished. The spiritual power is withdrawn from them, and especially from the savants, on the express ground that such power would quickly corrupt the scientific body; that it would appropriate " les vices du clergé; il deviendrait métaphysicien, astucieux et despote." The temporal power and the social hegemony were left with the industrial or capitalist class; and the power withdrawn from the savants was to be handed over to positive philosophers. The King himself was to bring in the new system by the Dictatorship-the favourite method in France of cutting the political Gordian knot. To this end St. Simon addressed himself to the King, begging that he would declare himself the premier industriel of the kingdom, and affirm the system by Royal Ordinance.

So far one does not find much Socialism, but a good Ideal of what is known as Positivism. We have a plutocracy in power; the capitalist ruling in the Government, as well as in the sphere of industry; the precise opposite of what Socialists of to-day desire. Apparently the antagonism now so pronounced between Capital and Labour had not then presented itself to St. Simon's mind. On the contrary, the capitalist was the general benefactor, and the special patron and protector of the proletariate.

But soon we find a new idea rising and intensifying in St. Simon's mind, an idea which his school developed much faster than the Master. He finds,

looking at the condition of that "large and interesting class" that lives by manual labour, that it is far from satisfactory. Especially he notices early that figure, in which the whole social problem presents itself in epitome," the able-bodied man who can get no work," and whose wife and family are tied to the hazard of his fate. He asks what are the chief wants of the large labouring class, and he finds that they are two: he wants constant work, and he wants knowledge; labour to live by, and the light of science which may help his fortunes. Both these should be assured to him. They are his rights. The public budget should be employed to ameliorate the condition of the people, and the two primary heads of expenditure should be; the first, for the education of the people; the second, for the ensuring of work to those who have no other means of existence. Here, for the first time, we have a distinct form of Socialism indicated; we have a form of State-Socialism and the Right to Labour recognized though whether a Government of capitalists would be likely to go far in a direction which might seem to threaten their own profits, or introduce additional competition into their special fields of enterprise, is a question that does not seem to have arisen in the philosopher's mind.

He goes on, however, in his now rapidly increasing sympathy for the proletariate, to declare that the aim of politics should be "to labour directly for the wellbeing, moral and material, of the working classes;" but he now perceives that neither could the new society subsist nor those noble aims be attained without a new morality. No society, he affirmed, was pos

" but the

sible without "moral ideas held in common; old morality was defective, and unsuited to the time. A new morality, resting on a new basis, was required; а new doctrine appropriate to the state of knowledge; and this new body of doctrine should be supplied, not as formerly by theologians, metaphysicians, men of letters, publicists, nor yet by savants, because they lacked the faculty of generalization: but by "positive philosophers" only, and here again we have the essence, so oft repeated, of Comte's "Philosophie Politique."

But neither could a society live without religion: still less could it be reformed. He addressed a letter to the king, in which he said that the fundamental principle of Christianity had commanded men to regard each other as brothers and to co-operate for mutual happiness; a principle which required to-day a new application. It was necessary that the temporal power should appertain to "men useful, laborious and pacific; and that the spiritual power should be assigned to men possessing the necessary knowledge.” Otherwise the principles of fraternity and mutual love would be inapplicable so long as these two powers were in the hands of warriors and theologians; since wars and theological dogmas have been the chief causes of hate amongst men. He turns to the philanthropists saying that to make Christianity a practical thing and a true moral power there will be previously necessary a moral force to do it. This new moral force he thinks is already distributed amongst then, and he calls on them to be the new evangelists. Preaching, the power of the word through voice and pen,

will be necessary to enforce the new doctrine on kings, capitalists, and peoples. And the final aim of all is declared to be to organize society in the manner the most advantageous for the greatest number; that is, the working classes. In his last work, the "Noveau Christianisme" (1825), he gives us the new moral maxim, the new version of our duty to our neighbour -the duty of all classes above the lowest-which is, that "all should labour for the development, material, moral, and intellectual, of the class the most numerous and the poorest." This is Christ's teaching adapted to the circumstances of our time. To do this is both morals and religion in one. There is no special dogma or religious doctrine laid down, save the belief in God, and the implied belief that Christ was specially commissioned to teach men the way of life, anew announced by St. Simon.

II.

SOME of these views are remarkable and original ; but they are not very socialistic. What rather strikes us in reading them in their totality is their strong resemblance to Positivism, save only in the last religious phase. It is only in the hands of his School that we find certain of his ideas developed, perhaps logically, but probably to consequences the master would not have allowed. At all events, it is amongst the St. Simonians that we find what is no more than the germ with St. Simon developed into the full-blown flower of an all-embracing State Socialism.

According to St. Simon, as we have just seen, the