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its sympathies , to justify its predictions ; she permits us not only to hope , but to believe , in a future essentially different from the present , Inis belief , at once rational and delightful , rests on the knowledge of the law of human , development , a law discovered by Kt . Simon , as we discover all things , by a spontaneous movement of intelligence , hut which he has verified by the positive method pursued in the physical sciences . ' *
For the details of this method , its application and value , the reader is re-r ferred to the third Lecture . " Mankind , says St . Simon , should be considered as a collective being * ( etre collectif , ) developing itself in successive generations , as the individual is developed in the succession of years . This development is progressive , it is subject to a law which may be called the physiological law of the human race . Others before him , Vico , Lessing , Turgot , Kant , Herder , Gondorcet , had approached more or less nearly to the idea of perfectibility , which in the present day seems generally admitted . St . Simon alone has rendered it
fruitful , by characterizing its progress , assigning it an end , shewing how it has operated , and how it should be carried forward . The development of human society does not go on in a continuous manner , but by alternate phases , which the new doctrine terms the organic and critical epochs of humanity . ( Epoques organiques , epoques critiques . ) In the first , humanity ( mankind ) conceives to itself a destination , and hence results , for social activity , a determinate tendency . Education and legislation direct to a common end till action , thought , and sentiment . The social hierarchy becomes the expression of this end , and is so regulated as best to attain it . Then it is that the authorities which exist are legitimate , sovereign , in the true sense of
the words . One general character pervades all organic epochs—they are religious . Religion then embraces all the operations of human activity ; it is , in a word , the social synthesis . The critical epochs present characters diametrically opposite ; during their course , mankind no longer knows its destination ; society has no determined object of activity ; education and legislation are uncertain in their aim ; they appear incessantly in contradiction with the manners , customs , and wants of society . The public authorities are no longer the expression of a real social hierarchy ( body ) ; they are stripped of authority , and even the feeble action they continue to exercise is contested .
One general feature is predominant over these , the critical epochs are irreligious . The critical epochs divide themselves into two distinct p eriods : in the first , we see the minds of a fraction of society , becoming gradually more and more important , unite in design and action lor a common end , namely , the ruin of the ancient , moral , and political order of things : in the second , which is the interval between destruction and re-edification , we see no longer thought or enterprise common to all—all is resolved into individualities , and pure &goi $ me is dominant . "
The hiBtorical series , extending from the time of ancient Greece to the present , exhibit two organic and two critical epochs . The first organic epoch is constituted by polytheism , and terminates at the commencement of the philosophic era in Greece ; the second commences with Christianity , and concludes at the end of the 15 th century . The first critical epocji extends from the appearance of the Grecian philosophers to the preaching of the
gospel ; the second , from the time of Luther % o the present . All the societies of Europe are at present engaged in a greater or less degree in the second period of this last critical epoch , and as , after the ruin of polytheism and the disorders which accompanied it , the human race ranged itself under a new religious law ; so in the present day , after the decline of Christianity , which has been going on for the last three centuries , humanity is preparing itself to enter into a new , moral , and political state .
* Sec our re murks at the close of the article .
Untitled Article
The Sxiint Simomies , 183
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 183, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/39/
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