The idea of association was amplified and enriched at its hands and given an historical setting. Association was shown to be an historical tendency which alternated with one in the opposite direction. The reign of anarchy, war, exploitation, had worked itself out when it produced the proletariat; the reign of co-operation, of organic unity, was about to begin with religion as its inspiration. At the same time the economics of Saint-Simonism were elaborated, and the necessity of the communal control of the instruments of production was proved by a reasoned sequence of argument. Society was to be a differentiated organisation in which merit alone was to determine the place of a man, and the value of his services was to determine the character of his reward. But on its mystical side it toppled over as so many fantastic religious movements have done. When men treat the flesh as anything but flesh and allow themselves to wander on the bewitched paths of symbolism and mysticism, they are in danger of becoming the slaves of the earthy realities which they think they have dissolved, or of becoming mad; and the blight of both misfortunes ended the school of Saint-Simon. But its healthy tenets never died. They were discussed by bands of men wherever discontent, either intellectual or economic, agitated Europe. Society kept them in her heart. Saint-Simonism quickened the social movement of the century.
Fourier, for instance, wrote before Saint-Simon, but it was Saint-Simonian influence that made Fourierism a living thing. Fourier
