In the years before his emergence as a thinker, Saint-Simon became involved with a new school in Paris, which was to be one of the most consequential acts of his very consequential life. Created in 1794, the École Polytechnique was a manifestation of the revolutionary belief in the perfectibility of mankind. The school was established to train young men, usually teens, in the arts of sciences and industry. A harbinger of the state funding of education that became a hallmark of France and the rest of Europe in the nineteenth century, the Polytechnique provided grants to students who showed scientific promise. Within a few decades, the school exceeded its founders’ ambitions and was widely heralded as a center for innovation.
By then, Saint-Simon had transformed himself. When he was forty-two, he published his first work of philosophy. He called for the establishment of a religion of science with Sir Isaac Newton as its patron saint. Over the next two decades, he published numerous treatises and gathered around him a group of energetic followers dedicated to the propagation and implementation of his ideas. They began to spread the gospel of Saint-Simon, one of whose tenets was that the world should be linked by canals.
The passion for canals was part of an overall philosophy of industrialization. Developed in fits and starts over the first decades of the nineteenth century, Saint-Simon’s system called for a society led by scientists and industrialists. Whereas most of Western history had placed the greatest value on those who own property while others farmed it, Saint-Simon spoke for a new generation of Europeans who prized work. He held that the best life was one devoted to industry, to building things and making things. Philosopher-industrialists should lead society, and the bottom of the social pyramid should be occupied by idlers, by people who lived off others or had no vocation. Only through hard work and industry, said Saint-Simon, could there be progress, and progress was man’s destiny.
These beliefs were radical. They challenged the doctrines of the church and the old regime. Most traditional church theology hadn’t been based on the notion of progress, and by the nineteenth century, the French ecclesiastical establishment had fallen behind secular thinkers. Saint-Simon built on several strains of Enlightenment thought, and crafted them into a doctrine that the future will always be better than the present. He then applied these ideas to the nascent industrial order emerging in postrevolutionary France. He rejected the notion that humans live and die according to God’s plan and that the ultimate goal is heavenly rewards. Instead, he enshrined earthly progress as the ultimate good. He recognized, however, that progress demands leaders. Certain types of people are more adept at leading the onward march—namely, scientists and engineers. Saint-Simon stressed that it was society’s job to mold such people at places like the Polytechnic School. There, future leaders would learn how to manipulate nature and shape the earth to suit the needs of mankind. Once society was led by these types, there would be no limit to what could be achieved, and no barriers to limitless prosperity, universal peace, and international harmony.
Saint-Simon was not a rigorous, organized thinker. He flitted from idea to idea, backtracked on some, and reworked others. He enjoyed whiling away hours in Left Bank cafés, talking with disciples and students, and his books often read as disjointed compilations of compelling ideas. Soon enough, however, a rough consistency emerged. His philosophy became known as “positivism,” which among other things suggested that history was headed in a positive direction and that science and industry would lead the way. The most celebrated disciple of Saint-Simon was the young Auguste Comte, who broke with his master and went on to develop positivism as a more coherent philosophical system whose influence on nineteenth-century Europe and the United States is difficult to overstate.
Saint-Simon, however, shifted gears later in life. He became more mystical, and more religious. He tried, with typical bravado, “to systematize the philosophy of God.” He asserted that civilization consists of dichotomies, especially between the temporal and the spiritual. The needs of the spirit, he went on, are distinct from the needs of the flesh. Historically, all civilizations had been bedeviled by that split. In the Catholic Church, the flesh was seen as sinful and the spirit as potentially noble, and that duality continued to plague Western civilization. To close the gap, Saint-Simon proposed to do nothing less than create a new religion, which he called, simply enough, the New Christianity.1
Concerned that positivism alone might perpetuate the duality that had crippled human history, Saint-Simon gave God, rather than the abstract notion of progress, the seat at the head of the table. He began to speak more about love and less about science. He evoked the language of St. Paul, and preached the golden rule to treat others as you would have them treat you. But, however much this theology stemmed from Christianity, it was a new form of it, and, unlike the patriarchs and the Vatican, Saint-Simon stressed that this world, not the next, was the only relevant arena for human destiny.
His disciples kept his ideas alive, and as disciples do, they fought over his legacy and then invented variations. After Saint-Simon died in 1825, his leading students quarreled over his mantle, and several factions emerged. The most dynamic, and most peculiar, of these was led by Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin. Combining the rites of pagan cults with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, Enfantin initiated a chain of events that led directly to the creation of the Suez Canal.
A contemporary of Comte, born in 1796, Enfantin was educated at the Polytechnic School and briefly served in the last armies of Napoleon. An unsatisfying career as a roving wine-merchant led him back to Paris, and by the early 1820s he had made his way into Saint-Simon’s inner circle. As befits his name, Enfantin was a lithe, graceful, effeminate man, who later developed a predilection for dressing in woman’s clothing. More than anyone, he embraced the New Christianity. During a series of symposiums among the Saint-Simonians in 1829, Enfantin explained his views to the gathering: “We come to proclaim that mankind has a religious future; that the religion of the future will be greater and more powerful than all those in the past; that it will, like those which preceded it, be the synthesis of all conceptions of mankind, and moreover, of all modes of being. Not only will it dominate the political order, but the political order will be totally a religious institution; for nothing will be conceived outside of God or will develop outside of His law. Let us add finally that this religion will embrace the entire world because the law of God is universal.”2
Saint-Simon had announced that society ought to be reorganized around a simple axiom: social institutions should be dedicated to the task of the material and moral improvement of the largest number of people. That was a bold idea, but it was Enfantin who added the additional twist that has since become an adage: “To each according to his capacities, and to each capacity according to his works.” That meant a society based on individual merit, in which those of greater capacities would naturally lead those of less. The greater good would always be the North Star, but some would have more sway than others.3 In essence, Enfantin blended Plato’s ideal of the philosopher king with what would later be known as the superman pathology of Nietzsche. It was a potent brew.
Enfantin was not modest. He described himself as “one of those lovable beings who is followed.” He gained the loyalty of the bulk of the Saint-Simonians, and he quickly established himself as a creative thinker in his own right. He took up where his teacher had left off. Saint-Simon had declared, “The Golden Age is not behind us; it is ahead; it is in the perfection of the social order; our fathers never saw it; our children will arrive there one day; and it is us who will pave the way.” But, unlike his master, Enfantin believed that the paving stones would have to consist of a good deal of metaphysical mystery. Starting with the notion that all civilizations are crippled by dualism, Enfantin wove a theology that covered all aspects of human existence. Not only was there a fissure between the temporal and the spiritual, between the world of Caesar and that of God, there was an even wider chasm between the masculine and feminine, men and women.
That split manifested itself in the inequality of social relations, which in turn impeded the ability of societies to grow as rapidly as progress demanded. Enfantin asserted that the promise of the New Christianity could only be realized if sexual relations were reformed. After the 1829 Parisian symposiums, Enfantin formalized his break with the rest of the Saint-Simonians and moved his followers to the suburb of Ménilmontant to form a new church. There, he became known as “Père” Enfantin, the “Father.” His followers were called “apostles.” Satellite churches were set up throughout the country, in places such as Toulouse and Lyon. Enfantin called for the abolition of prostitution, and he insisted that women should have the right of divorce, that they should enjoy the same legal guarantees as men, and that husbands should not have the right to the property of their wives. “Our apostolic work,” Enfantin wrote, “consists principally in the Appeal to Women and in the Rehabilitation of the Flesh through the political organization of industry and the creation of a new cult.” In addition to his sexual radicalism, he also seems to have considered himself the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, or at least “the instrument which God had sent to change the life of all men and women, just as He had sent Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and others to change the world in other epochs.” And in case this was not a sufficiently lofty peer group, Enfantin also considered himself a descendant of St. Paul.4
At Ménilmontant, this latter-day saint set himself up as the leader of a new order. Life in the community was regimented. Like monks, disciples were required to be celibate. Their morning began at 5:00 a.m., and for the rest of the day, prayer and lectures were interspersed with physical activities that ranged from cooking to masonry. Gardening received special attention. Every aspect of life was designed to reflect the overall philosophy. Songs were composed to accompany activities, and the lyrics praised Enfantin and celebrated God and the new world that was being created. For residents used to a life of privilege, this pseudo-monasticism was a break from society; for many, it may have been the first time they had washed their own clothes. Of course, none of them had worn clothes quite like those Enfantin required them to wear.
In an acute example of how clothes make the man, the Father ordered his apostles to wear vests that buttoned at the back, flared trousers that could easily be mistaken for a twentieth-century woman’s skirt, a brightly colored sash tied at the waist, and stockings that extended above the knee. White scarves were to be tied around their necks and under their beards, and, for travel, the disciples wore red berets that covered their shoulder-length hair. Some of it was aesthetic, but some of the custom-designed apparel had metaphoric significance. To secure the vests at the back required assistance, to symbolize, said Enfantin, the dependency of each individual on the kindness of others.
But Enfantin was not content simply to retreat from the bustle of Paris and redesign the couture of his followers. He meant to be a force in society, and that demanded engagement with it. He wanted to change the world, and he couldn’t do so from a private estate in a suburb in northern France.
Eighteen thirty-two was a difficult year. Enfantin and his leading disciples were put on trial for offending public morality. Their stance toward the liberation of women, and the rumors that, despite claims of celibacy, they engaged in orgies, agitated their less flexible neighbors. Having trumpeted Enfantin’s philosophy in various publications, the community had become something of a tourist attraction, and that both increased Enfantin’s visibility and incensed the guardians of law and order. He was briefly imprisoned, and the experience unnerved him so much that he looked beyond France for the next phase of his master plan. Having explored the dichotomy between spirit and flesh, and between male and female, he decided that history demanded the union of the two, and the venue he selected for that marriage was Egypt.
With an eye toward the dramatic gesture, Enfantin declared 1833 the Year of the Mother, and then organized an expedition that mimicked Napoleon’s in ambition, though not in size. “I heard from my prison,” he wrote to a friend in January 1833, “the Orient waking up and crying out…. The Nile has broken through its dikes, and it gushes out farther than it ever has before, carrying the seed that Napoleon scattered on its banks, which Muhammad Ali now fertilizes…. The great communion draws near; the Mediterranean will be beautiful this year.”5 By early spring, Enfantin had assembled a group of several dozen men and a few women. Most of them were engineers trained like Enfantin at the Polytechnic. He also sent a delegation of his community to Constantinople. Calling themselves “The Companions of the Woman,” they offended the Ottoman authorities by aggressively touting their views about sexual relations and preaching the gospel of the New Christianity. Unwisely, they declared that a new day, presumably one that would dramatically alter the role of the sultan, was nigh. Narrowly avoiding prison, they were told to leave Turkey, and they met up with Enfantin and his party in Alexandria in the fall.
The Father’s motives were a combination of the sublime and the mundane. He said that Egypt was the “nuptial bed” that would allow for the symbolic union of East and West. The East represented the female principle, the West the male. The East, for Enfantin and his disciples, was that portion of world civilization that emphasized the universal Mother, the earth goddess. The West signified the Father and the spirit of intellect, reason, and creativity. On its own, each was lacking a key ingredient, and for that reason, the world was locked in struggle. Only when these two were no longer divided by centuries of human pettiness and distrust would universal harmony and prosperity be more than a utopian dream. By making the journey to the East, Enfantin planned to heal the fissure and thereby inaugurate a new age of progress, industry, and peace. Once the marriage was consummated, the Year of the Mother, dedicated to women, would be succeeded by the Year of the Father, dedicated to industry.
To clarify the goal, Enfantin or one of his followers composed a brief poem:
It is we who will make
Between ancient Egypt and old Judea
One of the two new routes from Europe
To India and China
Later, we will pierce the other
At Panama
Suez
Is the center of our life’s work
There, we will do something
That the world will witness
In order to confess that we are
Males6
A canal through the Isthmus of Suez would consummate the marriage, because then the waters of the Mediterranean would mingle with those of the Red Sea. The Mediterranean was the sea of the West, of the male Occident. The Red Sea was of the female Orient. Once the canal was cut, the two seas, representing the two eternal forces of life, would join, and the duality that had sundered the planet would be no more.
It is hard, at two centuries’ remove, to take Enfantin altogether seriously. It is easier to dismiss him as a blowhard than to consider him a visionary. His language wasn’t simply florid; it was imbued with a sense of destiny and metaphysical purpose that seems more suited to mystics or madmen. But although he was more emphatic than many of his contemporaries, he was not completely outside the mainstream, at least not in his ambitions or his belief that he had been marked by history to perform monumental deeds. Europe in the first part of the nineteenth century was full of people who spoke in exaggerated terms about their own fate and the history of the world. Indeed, Enfantin’s way of expressing himself was not so different from that of the late-eighteenth-century founders of the United States or the revolutionaries of France. His specific ideas about women, and about the East and the West, may have been eccentric, and the odd dress code struck his contemporaries as, well, odd, but the sense of moment was not especially remarkable in a world occupied by Romantics such as Byron and Chateaubriand, by Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte. Later, when Lesseps began his mission, he spoke in similar, though less metaphysical, terms.
His reputation preceding him, Enfantin and his coterie disembarked in Alexandria to a crowd of onlookers, wh
o must have been somewhat bemused by the peculiar appearance of the travelers. After the hostile reception in Turkey, Enfantin and his acolytes had toned down their appearance. Beards were trimmed or shaved off, and the outfits were altered or muted, but they still made a spectacle. Alexandria was a far different place from the decaying port occupied by Napoleon three decades before. Under the rule of Muhammad Ali, Egypt was gradually being integrated into the world commercial system. Alexandria had linked Asia and the Mediterranean for most of antiquity, and after centuries of neglect and decline, it was once again thriving. The city that greeted Enfantin had seen a recent influx of French merchants, English entrepreneurs, Austrian middlemen, Greek traders, and a crazy quilt of other Europeans, and they conducted themselves with the jaded sophistication typical of multicultural cities devoted to commerce.7
By the time he arrived in Egypt, Enfantin had undergone a subtle shift. He continued to speak in terms of the nuptials between East and West; he still saw himself as the vehicle of the virile Occident who would impregnate the Orient; and he talked of his mission to Egypt as “a new crusade, guided by the eternal Star transfigured in the Epiphany.”8 But he also focused more on doing and less on philosophizing. The pragmatic component of his “religion” needed tending, and his apostles were trained engineers. Philosophy aside, Enfantin traveled to Egypt because he had a plan: to convince Muhammad Ali to use the expertise of the Saint-Simonians to modernize the country.
Muhammad Ali closely resembled the Western image of an Eastern potentate. Bearded, somewhat short, usually adorned in billowing yet simple robes, he greeted petitioners while reclining on a divan. Slaves attended to him and ministers cowered in his presence. He was surprisingly soft-spoken and invariably polite, with a gentle, melodious voice. Visitors were often struck by his eyes, which seemed at once playful and ominous. Like many self-made men, he possessed an iron resolve, and his adversaries frequently blinked before he did. In 1811, he invited the remaining members of the Mamelukes to a sumptuous banquet in the Jewel Palace at the Citadel, and as they were relaxing in a gustatory haze, his guards sealed the room and massacred all but one, who jumped into an alley through a large open window and escaped on his horse. Having killed the remnants of the old ruling class, Muhammad Ali then appropriated their lands.
Parting the Desert Page 4
