621. The Followers of Saint Simon and of Fourier.—There is little of practical value to be gathered from the writings of the celebrated utopists, who, at the opening of this century, became known by their plans of social organization. It is the chimerical which characterizes their systems. Cabet demanded among other absurdities that all ancient books be burned, and that no new books be written except by command of the State. Besides, he would have the school-code established by the children themselves.[269]
Victor Considerant suppressed, not books, but discipline and authority. “The child,” he said, “shall no longer be disobedient, because he shall no longer be commanded.”[270]
Saint Simon, in 1816, communicated to the Society for Elementary Instruction, a brief essay which gave proof of his interest in education. For him and his disciples, education is “the aggregate of efforts to be employed in order to adapt each new generation to the social order to which it is called by the march of humanity.” This was to mark the contrast between modern tendencies which aspire above all else to an earthly and a social end, with ancient tendencies which were subservient to supernatural ideas. Æsthetic sentiments, scientific methods, industrial activity,—such is the triple development which special and professional education should consider. But above this the Saint-Simonians place moral education, too much neglected, as they think, which should consist particularly in developing in the young the sympathetic and affectionate faculties. The Saint-Simonians placed but little dependence on science and abstract principles for assuring among men the reign of morality. Sentiment, in their view, is the true moral principle, and education, consequently, ought to be essentially the education of the heart.
622. Fourier (1772-1837).—Fourier, like Saint Simon, had educational pretensions. There is nothing more curious than his treatise on Natural Education. In it there is only here and there a flash of good sense mingled with a multitude of grotesque fancies.
Fourier renews the utopias of Plato, and confides infants to public nurses. He is more reasonable when, in spite of his declamations on the excellence of nature, he is really willing to recognize in children a diversity of characters, and divides “the nurslings and the babies” into three classes,—“the benign, the malign, and the devilkins.”
We must also commend Fourier for his efforts to encourage industrial activity. There is perhaps a valuable hint in those walks which he recommends children to take through manufactories and shops, so that at the sight of such or such a tool, their particular vocation may be suggested to them!
The instincts of the child are sacred in the eyes of Fourier, even the worst, their inclination to destroy, for example, or their contempt for the rights of property. Far from opposing them, he turns them to account and utilizes them, by employing destructive and slovenly children in occupations in accord with their tastes; for example, in the pursuit of reptiles, and in the cleansing of sewers.
But it is useless to enter into longer details. The education of the Fourierites is neither a discipline nor a rule of life; it is simply a system of complaisant adherence, and even of ardent provocation, to the instincts which the child inherits from nature. It is no longer a question either of directing or of training; it is simply necessary to emancipate and to excite.
623. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and the Positivists.—The positivist school, and its illustrious founder, Auguste Comte, could not omit, in their encyclopædic works, a question so important as that of education. The author of the Course in Positive Philosophy had even announced a special treatise on pedagogy, “a great subject,” he said, “which has not yet been undertaken in a manner sufficiently systematic.”[271] The promise was not kept, but from different passages in the writings of Auguste Comte it is possible to reconstruct, in its principal features, the education which would be derived from his system.