564 Ch. 14 • The Industrial Revolution

champions of the power of science and technology to construct new social

and political institutions.

Count Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) posited a “religion of

humanity,” arguing that religion should “direct society toward the great

end of the most rapid amelioration possible of the lot of the poorest class.”

In 1820, Saint-Simon published a provocative parable. Speaking hypothet­

ically, he asked what the consequences for France would be if all of its

dukes and duchesses, princes and princesses, bishops and priests, and other

luminaries of altar, throne, and chateau sank in a terrible shipwreck. As

tragic as that event would be, he had to admit that the loss to society would

be inconsiderable. However, if France, in a similar tragedy, were to lose all

of its most learned men, talented bankers, artisans, and productive farm­

ers, the result would be disastrous. The timing of his parable was most unfor­

tunate, because soon after its publication in 1820 the heir to the throne of

France, the duke of Berry, fell to an assassin’s knife (see Chapter 15). Saint­

Simon was charged with offending the royal family, but he was acquitted by a

jury.

Saint-Simon postulated a hierarchy, or order of status, based not on blood,

but on productivity. Believing that history moves through discernible stages,

he asserted that mankind could anticipate a future in which science would

solve the material problems of humanity in harmony with an era of moral

improvement. For this to happen, people of talent must be freed from the fet­

ters of restraint imposed by uncaring, unproductive monarchs, nobles, and

priests.

Contemporary and historical appraisals of Charles Fourier (1772-1837),

Saint-Simon’s mystical rival, have ranged from sanctifying him as a genius

of great insight to ridiculing him as a paranoid crackpot. Fourier claimed

that at a very early age he discovered that the art of selling was the practice

of lying and deception. At his father’s insistence, he went off to Lyon as a

young man to start a business that quickly failed. Fourier spent the rest of

his life preparing a grand scheme for improving the condition of humanity.

His cosmology rested upon his conclusion that history moved in great cycles

toward a more perfect future. This planet’s next stage would be based upon

mankind’s discovery that the principles of cooperation and harmony would

free everyone from the repression of bourgeois individualism. Having deter­

mined that there were 810 distinct personality types, Fourier proposed that

they be organized into “phalanx” communities made up of 1,620 people, one

man and one woman of each personality type. The phalanx would channel

the “passions” of each person in socially productive ways, while individuals

would benefit from the opportunity to express their deepest proclivities. In

the “phalanstery,” the place where the Utopians would live, crime would

become a distant memory, because criminals’ supposed penchant for blood

would be safely fulfilled in certain occupations, such as by becoming butch­

ers. With everyone so satisfied, it would not matter that differences in

wealth would remain. Fourier sat in his apartment everyday at noon, await­