The order of mankind as seen by Auguste Comte

‘This influence strongly served my philosophic education.’ He added ‘T certainly owe a great deal intellectually to SaintSimon, that is to say, he contributed powerfully to launching me in the philosophic direction that I have clearly created for eee today and that I will follow without hesitation all my

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To the same friend he writes in 1818:

‘I have learned through this relationship of work and friendship with one of the men who sees furthest in philosophic politics. I have learned a mass of things I vainly would have sought in books, and my mind has made more headway these six months of our connection than it would in three years, had I been alone’.

It was the first chapters of the ‘Positive Polity’ that first appeared incorporated with Saint-Simon’s work on Industry, and when it was published separately—in a style somewhere between the two extremes of comment just quoted—Comte wrote:

‘Having reflected for i time on the main idea of SaintSimon, I applied myself exclusively to developing and perfecting that portion of the views of this philosopher which relates to scientific direction . . . I thought I had to make public the preceding statement so that, if my works appear to deserve some approval, it may go to the founder of the philosophic school of which I am honoured to be a part.’

I go into these relations between the two thinkers because it is seldom made clear. The English Positivists, for instance, were essentially Comtists, and were not much interested in doing justice to Saint-Simon. Justice to him must be done, however, when we realise that he was the intellectual father not only, in some respects, of Comte, but of four or five other French thinkers of some or of great importance, the most remarkable of whom are Fourier (though theinfluence in this case is disputed) and Proudhon; besides the more recent Durkheim, who is more a Saint-Simonian than a Comteian. But perhaps the best conclusion to this brief allusion to the problem would be some words of John Morley (who did not write as a Comtist himself): ‘The most cursory glance into Saint-Simon’s writings is enough to reveal the thread