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II

The influence of Saint-Simonism in England was also partly in the literary field. The main expositor of their ideas here became for a time Thomas Carlyle, whose indebtedness to Saint-Simonian doctrine is well known and who even translated and attempted to publish with an anonymous introduction Saint-Simon's Nouveau christianismei.15.4 He is the first of the many instances we shall meet where Saint-Simonism or Comtian and German influences so readily blended. Carlyle's views on the philosophy of history, his exposition of the law of progress in Sartor Resartus, his division of history into positive and negative periods, are all mainly of Saint-Simonian origin, and his interpretation of the French Revolution is penetrated with Saint-Simonian thought. The influence which he in turn exercised need not be stressed here, but it is worth pointing out that the later English positivists recognized that his teaching had largely prepared the way for them.15.5

Better known is the influence which the Saint-Simonians exercised on J. S. Mill. In his Autobiography15.6 he describes them as ``the writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of thinking was brought home'' to him and recounts how particularly one of their publications, which seemed to him far superior to the rest, Comte's early System of Positive Policy,

harmonized well with my existing notions to which it seemed to give a scientific shape. I already regarded the methods of physical science as the proper models for political. But the chief benefit which I derived at this time from the trains of thought suggested by the Saint-Simonians and by Comte, was, that I obtained a clearer conception than ever before of the peculiarities of an era of transition in opinion, and ceased to mistake the moral and intellectual characteristics of such an era, for the normal attributes of humanity.

Mill goes on to explain how, although he lost sight for a time of Comte, he was kept au courant of the Saint-Simonians' progress by G. d'Eichthal (who had also introduced Carlyle to Saint-Simonism) ,15.7 how he read nearly everything they wrote and how it was ``partly by their writings that [his] eyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance as indefeasible facts and freedom of production and exchange as the dernier mot of social improvement.'' From a letter to d'Eichthal 15.8 it appears that he became so far convinced as to be ``inclined to think that [their] social organization, under some modification or other ...is likely to be the final and permanent condition of our race,'' although he differed from them in believing that it would take many or at least several stages till mankind would be capable of realizing it. We have here undoubtedly the first roots of J. S. Mill's socialist leanings. But in Mill's case, too, this was largely a preparation for the still more profound influence which Comte was later to exercise on him.


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