It was not until some years after that, having made the acquaintance of a St. Simonian lady, I was enabled to read the doctrinal writings and to form an idea of the aspirations and the dogmas of the school of St. Simon. If the nature of this work forbids me their analysis, it cannot reproach me for expressing my sympathies for those who have had great and generous aspirations; for those who, in a critical point of view, have rendered real services to the cause of Progress; for those who have brought to light the solution of the two capital problems of our epoch; the emancipation of woman and of the workman. The St. Simonians have been enough assailed, enough calumniated to justify a woman who is not a St. Simonian in considering it a duty to render them justice, by acknowledging the good which they have done.
Yes, you have a right to be proud of your name of St. Simonians, you who have proclaimed the obligation of laboring without respite for the physical, moral and intellectual amelioration of the most numerous and the poorest class;
You who have proclaimed the sanctity of science, art, manufactures, and labor in every form;
You who have proclaimed the equality of the sexes in the family, the church, and the state;
You who have preached of peace and fraternity to a world given over to wars of cannon and competition.
You who have criticised the ancient dogma, and all the evil institutions that have thence arisen;
Yes, I repeat, you have deserved well of Progress, you have deserved well of Humanity; and you have a right to bear with pride your great scholastic name; for it was noble to desire the emancipation of woman, of labor, and of the laborer; it was generous to consecrate youth and fortune to it, as so many among you have done.
Through your aspirations, you have been the continuers of '89, since you dreamed of realizing what was contained in the germ in the Declaration of Rights: these are your titles of greatness; this is why your name will not perish. But if, through your sentiments, you belonged to the great era of '89, the social form in which you claimed to incarnate your principles, belonged to the Middle Ages; the age therefore has done right to leave you behind. Seduced by trinitarian mysticism, deluded by an erroneous historical point of view, you claimed to resuscitate hierarchy and theocracy in a system of humanity fashioned in conformity with the opposing principle; the triumph of individual liberty in social equality. This is the reason that the age could not follow you. No more could women follow you, for they felt that they could only be affranchised through labor and through purity of morals; by ruling over, not imitating masculine passions. They felt that their power of moralization was due as much to their chastity as to their intellect; they knew that those who make use of the most liberty in love, neither love nor esteem the other sex; that, in general, they employ their ascendancy over it to pervert it to ruin and afflict their companions, and to dissolve the family and civilization; that, in consequence, they are the most dangerous enemies of the emancipation of their sex; for man, sobered of his passion, can never desire to emancipate those by whom he has been deceived, ruined and demoralized.
The St. Simonian orthodoxy is therefore, in my opinion, greatly mistaken with respect to the ways and means of realization. Shall we impute this to it as a crime? No, indeed! social problems are not mathematical problems; there is merit in propounding them; courage and devotion in pursuing their solution, even when we fail completely to attain it.
We all know the spirit of the St. Simonians who first brought before the public mind of the age the question of female emancipation; it would be ungrateful in the women who demand liberty and equality not to recognize the debt of gratitude which they have contracted toward them. It is their duty to say to their companions: the seal of St. Simonianism is the safeguard of the liberty of woman; wherever therefore you meet a St. Simonian, you may press his hand fraternally; you have in him a defender of your right.