Saint-Simon: A Nineteenth Century Prophet

During the first years of the reign of Louis Philippe Paris was in a state of acute intellectual as well as political excitement. The Romantic Movement was reaching its climax, and the intelligentsia of Paris was experiencing the tremendous emotional impact of the first performance of Victor Hugo’s Hemani (1830) and of Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique (1831). To this orgy of sentiment, mixed with grandiose ideas, was added a startlingly new religious movement, that of the Saint-Simonians. It was named after the eccentric and original thinker, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, who died in 1825, shortly after the publication of his last and best-known work, Le Nouveau Christianisme.