ABSTRACT

The first great figure of sociology precedes the invention of the name so-ciology by Auguste Comte. Sociology, too, cannot speak its own newly minted, unalloyed speech. Its name reveals its situation at the thresh-old of unprecedented circumstances, at the portals to a world order that rested on the scientific acquisition of knowledge of natural forces. On the strength of Auguste Comte doctrines, Saint-Simon enjoys the reputation of having been the first socialist beside Fourier. In this respect, he belongs to the passing stream of socialism in the nineteenth century. The healer of social orders is aware of his own dependence on the historically conditioned spiritual and social traditions of Christianity. The originality of means, and his originality in apportioning tasks to sociology, their position in relation to Christianity and to natural science—these are inscribed in the life of Saint-Simon with much greater clarity than in the evaporation-prone, divaricating water-course of this science in times to come.