Secular Humanism

Robert Owen had earned credentials as a capitalist; William Thompson inherited an estate. The best-known French socialists were, by contrast, men whose family fortunes had been dissipated or destroyed.

De Saint-Simon’s basic views were less socialist than meritocratic. He argued that an economic system based on skill and effort would inevitably prevail over one based on privileges of birth. Men and women should be rewarded for virtue on earth, as well as in heaven.⁸ France was already dependent on a new set of skills. What would happen if France lost fifty of her best physicists, chemists, mechanical engineers, businessmen, locksmiths, etc., comprising, in sum the top thousand scientists, artists, and artisans of the country? The effects would be far more ruinous, he predicted, than the loss of ten thousand members of the French nobility.⁹

But de Saint-Simon was not a simple individualist. He believed that a misplaced egoism was undermining French society.¹⁰ His own studies of ‘‘universal interests’’ led him to divide men and women into three groups based on three different human capacities: feeling, thinking, and acting. Given the opportunity to harmoniously express these capacities, individuals would work happily in concert. The need to express one’s own true nature trumped more abstract principles and pecuniary incentives.

The obstacles to the expression of de Saint-Simon’s own true nature were formidable. He lived in penury, aided only by a few occasional collaborators. During one bout of depression he shot his own eye out in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. As he lay dying of natural causes in 1825 he reiterated the paternalistic convictions he shared with Owen. All members of society should be afforded the greatest possible opportunity to develop their capabilities.¹¹ Employers could increase efficiency by rewarding performance and fostering the loyalty and affection of their employees.¹²