SIMONIANISM, ST. The School of thought founded by Count St. Simon (170-1825), who seems to have been influenced by the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-177S). The origin and aims of St. Simonianism are described admirably by Edward Vansittart Neale (15I0-I592), who became one of the first members of the Christian Social Union. " St. Simon was nurtured among the stirring seeues of the last half of the Eighteenth Century. Sprung from an ancient family of French noblesse, he grew up to manhood while the power of the Grand Monarque was still unbroken. He took an active part in that war of American Independence, the prelude to the great European movement, becoming a colonel under Washington at the age of twenty-three. He saw society shaken to its basis by the hurricane of the French Revolution, terminating in the dazzling but brief effort of Napoleon to create a new European unity by military power." After several preliminary works which aimed at explaining methods of reorganizing society upon a new basis, he published his " Treatise du Nouveau Christianisufe," which soon after his death became the foundation of the system known as St. Simonianism. The philosophy of the Simonians had an essentially religious character. " The destination of mankind, they taught, bound up in God with that of the globe they inhabit, was accomplished progressively. The end of man was happiness, which he could obtain only by a religious union with those of his own race and with the world which surrounds him. The grandest desire which mankind could form for social and individual happiness was that of the religious and political associa tion of all nations among themselves, of all the families of the same nation, and of all the individuals of the same family, and of the harmony between the two halves of the human race, the man and the woman, whose union by the institution of marriage forms the type and germ of all other associations. Association was defined to be the union of men to work together and enjoy peaceably the fruits of their labour : the worth of man in associa tion would be measured by the special portion which he could personally accomplish of the common task; this constituted his capacity, otherwise called his personality or liberty. But men were born with unequal and different capacities: this was the law of God, a holy law, which man should love as the condition of his progress. In
consequence association implied a hierarchy, that is a division of different tasks according to men's different vocations or aptitudes, and a combination of efforts by the subordination of the inferior to the superior capac ities, terminating in the result of the union of all in one social work which had as its basis the desires and the wants of all, and as its object the moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of all; and was so arranged that every one would take part in it according to his capacity, and share in the results according to his work. In its complete form association would consist of artists. or priests; men of science, or theologians; and men of industry, otherwise called theurgists; and its outward object would be the embellishing and making useful to man the terrestial globe. The progress of mankind con sisted in the degree of perfection attained in acting upon this law of association. In the most imperfect stage of human progress, from man's appearance upon the earth to the Christian era, the nature of the work assigned to each man and the reward allotted to him had depended upon his birth. Castes, slavery, serfdom, in heritance, the servitude of the most numerous class, l'exploitation de l'homme par l'homme, with their con sequences, war, ignorance, misery, and disease, were the characteristics of this period; as, in the opposite stage, the emancipation of the most numerous class by the abolition of all the privileges of birth, with its results peace and love, the moral amelioration of mankind by the continual progress of religion expressed by the fine arts, their intellectual amelioration by the continual pro gress of science, and their physical amelioration by the continued progress of industry, would characterise the future, after the adoption of the perfect law announced by St. Simon." Unfortunately these doctrines lent them selves to abuses. To community of property was added afterwards community of women, and in 1832 St. Simonianism had to be suppressed by the French Govern men. Auguste Comte (170S-1S57), however, was a dis ciple of St. Simon, and in his own philosophy, Positivism (q.v.), revived much of the teaching of his master. See Edward Vansittart Neale, The Characteristic Features of some of the Principal Systems of Socialism, 1851; J. H. Blunt; cp. Giuseppe Nazzini, Thoughts upon Demo cracy in Europe, 1S47.