m our attention; the curious story is told in
M. Weill's admirable monograph. [Footnote: It may be noticed that
Saint-Simonians came to the front in public careers after the revolution
of 1848; e.g. Carnot, Reynaud, Charton.] The sect is now extinct, but
its influence was wide in its day, and it propagated faith in Progress
as the key to history and the law of collective life.[Footnote: Two able
converts to the ideas of Saint-Simon seceded from the school at an early
stage in consequence of Enfantin's aberrations: Pierre Leroux, whom
we shall meet again, and P. J. B. Buchez, who in 1833 published a
thoughtful "Introduction a la science de l'histoire," where history is
defined as "a science whose end is to foresee the social future of the
human species in the order of its free activity" (vol. i. p. 60,. ed. 2,
1842).]

CHAPTER XVI. THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE

1.

Auguste Comte did more than any preceding thinker to establish the
idea of Progress as a luminary which could not escape men's vision.
The brilliant suggestions of Saint-Simon, the writings of Bazard and
Enfantin, the vagaries of Fourier, might be dismissed as curious rather
than serious propositions, but the massive system wrought out by Comte's
speculative genius--his organic scheme of human knowledge, his elaborate
analysis of history, his new science of sociology--was a great fact with
which European thought was forced to reckon. The soul of this system
was Progress, and the most important problem he set out to solve was the
determination of its laws.

His originality is not dimmed by the fact that he owed to Saint-Simon
more than he afterwards admitted or than his disciples have been willing
to allow. He collaborated with him for several years, and at this time
enthusiastically acknowledged the intellectual stimulus he received from
the elder savant. [Footnote: Comte collaborated with Saint-Simon
from 1818-1822. The final rupture came in 1824. The question of their
relations is cleared up by Weill (Saint-Simon, chap. xi.). On the
quarrel see also Ostwald, Auguste Comte (1914), 13 sqq.] But he derived
from Saint-Simon much more than the stimulation of his thoughts in a
certain direction. He was indebted to him for some of the characteristic
ideas of his own system. He was indebted to him for the principle which
lay at the very basis of his system, that the social phenomena of
a given period and the intellectual state of the society c