"
Thereupon their everlasting discussion began afresh, with Saint-Simon and
Fourier on one side and Proudhon and Auguste Comte on the other. Bache
gave a long account of the last commemoration which had taken place in
honour of Fourier's memory, how faithful disciples had brought wreaths
and made speeches, forming quite a meeting of apostles, who all
stubbornly clung to their faith, as confident in the future as if they
were the messengers of some new gospel. Afterwards Morin emptied his
pockets, which were always full of Positivist tracts and pamphlets,
manifestos, answers and so forth, in which Comte's doctrines were
extolled as furnishing the only possible basis for the new, awaited
religion. Pierre, who listened, thereupon remembered the disputes in his
little house at Neuilly when he himself, searching for certainty, had
endeavoured to draw up the century's balance-sheet. He had lost his
depth, in the end, amidst the contradictions and incoherency of the
various precursors. Although Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon, he
denied him in part, and if Saint-Simon's doctrine ended in a kind of
mystical sensuality, the other's conducted to an inacceptable regimenting
of society. Proudhon, for his part, demolished without rebuilding
anything. Comte, who created method and declared science to be the one
and only sovereign, had not even suspected the advent of the social
crisis which now threatened to sweep all away, and had finished
personally as a mere worshipper of love, overpowered by woman.
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