Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/217

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dustries are the making of embroideries by machinery and by hand, turning billiard-balls, and engine-building. St Quentin, the A uyusta Veromanduorum of the Romans, stood at the meeting-place of five roads of military importance. In the 3d century it was the scene of the martyrdom of Caius Quintinus, who had come as a preacher of Christianity, and in the reign of Dagobert the martyr's tomb became under the influence of St Eloi a place of pilgrimage. After it had been thrice ravaged by the Normans the town was surrounded by walls in 883. It became under Pippin, grandson of Charlemagne, one of the principal domains of the county of Vermandois, and in 1103 was constituted a com- mune. In 1195 it was incorporated with the royal domain and about the same time received an increase of its privileges. From 1420 to 1471 St Quentin was occupied by the Burgundians. Its capture by the Spaniards on the day of St Lawrence, 1557, was the success which Philip II. of Spain commemorated by building the Escorial. Two years later the town was restored to the French, and in 1560 it was assigned as the dowry of Mary Stuart. The forti- fications erected under Louis XIV. were demolished between 1810 and 1820. During the Franco-Prussian War St Quentin repulsed the German attacks of 8th October 1870 ; and on 19th January 1871 it was the centre of the great battle fought by General Faid- herbe, one of the last episodes of the campaign.


ST SEBASTIAN. See San Sebastian.


ST SERVAN, a cantonal town of France, in the depart- ment of Ille-et-Vilaine, on the right bank of the Ranee to the south of St Malo, from which it is separated by a creek at least a mile wide (see ST MALO). In population (10,691 inhabitants in 1881 ; 12,867 in the commune) St Servan is slightly the smaller town of the two. It is not enclosed by walls, and with its new houses, straight wide streets, and numerous gardens forms quite a contrast to its neigh- bour. In summer it attracts a number of seaside visitors. The floating dock will when finished have an area of 27 acres and one mile of quays. The creek on which it opens is dry at low water, but at high water is 30 to 40 feet deep. Another port on the Ranee, to the south-west of the town at the foot of the tower of Solidor, is used by the local guard-ship. This tower, erected in the close of the 14th century by Duke John IV. for the purpose of contesting the claims of Josselin de Rohan, bishop of St Malo, to the temporal sovereignty of the town, consists of three distinct towers formed into a triangle by loop-holed and machico- lated curtains. At the north-west point of St Servan stands the " city fort " and near by are the ruins of the cathedral of St Peter of Aleth, the seat of a bishopric from the 6th to the 12th century. The church is modern (1742-1842).

The northern quarter of St Servan, called "the City," occupies the site of the city of Aleth, which at the close of the Roman empire supplanted Corseul as the capital of the Curiosolites. Aleth was a bulwark of Dniidism in those regions and was not Christianized till the 6th century, when St Malo became its first bishop. On the removal of the bishopric to St Malo Aleth declined ; but the houses that remained standing became the nucleus of a new com- munity, which placed itself under the patronage of St Servan, apostle of the Orkneys. In 1758 the place was occupied by Marl- borough. It was not till 1789 that St Servan became a separate commune from St Malo with a municipality and police of its own.


SAINT-SIMON, Claude Henri, Comte de (1760- 1825), the founder of French socialism, was born at Paris on 17th October 1760. He belonged to a younger branch of the family of the celebrated duke of that name. His education, he tells us, was directed by D'Alembert. At the age of nineteen he went as volunteer to assist the American colonies in their revolt against Britain. From his youth Saint-Simon felt the promptings of an eager ambition. His valet had orders to awake him every morn- ing with the words, " Remember, monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do " ; and his ancestor Charle- magne appeared to him in a dream foretelling a remarkable future for him. Among his early schemes was one to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific by a canal, and another to construct a canal from Madrid to the sea. He took no part of any importance in the Revolution, but amassed a little fortune by land speculation, not on his own account, however, as he said, but to facilitate his future projects. Accordingly, when he was nearly forty years of age he went through a varied course of study and experiment, in order to enlarge and clarify his view of things. One of these experiments was an unhappy marriage, which, after a year's duration, was dissolved by the mutual consent of the parties. Another result of his experiments was that he found himself completely impoverished, and lived in penury for the remainder of his life. The first of his numer- ous writings, Lettres d'un Habitant de Geneve, appeared in 1803; but his early writings were mostly scientific and political. It was not till 1817 that he began in a treatise entitled L 'Industrie to propound his socialistic views, which he further developed in L'Oraanisateur (1819), Du Systeme Industriel (1821), Catechisme des Industrials (1823). The last and most important expression of his views is the Nouveau Christianisme (1825). For many years before his death in 1825 (at Paris on 19th May) Saint-Simon had been reduced to the greatest straits. He was obliged to accept a laborious post for a salary of 40 a year, to live on the generosity of a former valet, and finally to solicit a small pension from his family. In 1823 he attempted suicide in despair. It was not till very late in his career that he attached to himself a few ardent disciples. As a thinker Saint -Simon was entirely deficient in system, clearness, and consecutive strength. But his great influence on modern thought is undeniable, both as the historic founder of French socialism and as suggest- ing much of what was afterwards elaborated into Comtism. Apart from the details of his socialistic teaching, which are vague, inconsistent, and unsystematic, we find that the ideas of Saint -Simon as to the reconstruction of society are very simple. His opinions were conditioned by the French Revolution and by the feudal and military system still prevalent in France. In opposition to the destructive liberalism of the Revolution he insisted on the necessity of a new and positive reorganization of society. So far was he from advocating fresh social revolt that he appealed to Louis XVIII. to inaugurate the new order of things. In opposition, however, to the feudal and military system, the former aspect of which had been strengthened by the restoration, he advocated an arrangement by which the industrial chiefs should control society. In place of the mediaeval church the spiritual direction of society should fall to the men of science. What Saint-Simon desired, therefore, was an industrialist state directed by modern science. In short, the men who are fitted to organize society for productive labour are entitled to bear rule in it. The social aim is to produce things useful to life ; the final end of social activity is " the exploitation of the globe by association." The contrast between labour and capital so much emphasized by later socialism is not present to Saint-Simon, but it is assumed that the industrial chiefs, to whom the control of production is to be committed, shall rule in the interest of society. Later on the cause of the poor receives greater attention, till in his greatest work, The New Christianity, it becomes the central point of his teaching and takes the form of a religion. It was this religious development of his teach- ing that occasioned his final quarrel with Comte. Previous to the publication of the Nouveau Christianisme, Saint- Simon had not concerned himself with theology. Here he starts from a belief in God, and his object in the treatise is to reduce Christianity to its simple and essential elements. He does this by clearing it of the dogmas and other excrescences and defects which have gathered round both the Catholic and Protestant forms of it, which he subjects to a searching and ingenious criticism. "The new Christian organization will deduce the temporal insti- tutions as well as the spiritual from the principle that all