CHAPTER XVII

to practical experiment in quasi-Socialistic schemes which characterised Robert Owen. His philosophy was mingled with a mysticism which had a tendency to increase—a tendency to form a new religion rather than to realise a new condition of life—and which was carried into the absurdities of a kind of worship by his immediate followers, more or less imitated by the Positivists of our own day, whose founder, Auguste Comte, was his most cherished disciple. His Socialism was of a vague kind, and admitted the existence of classes of talent as expressed by the motto of Saint Simonism, “From each according to his capacity; to each according to his deeds.” In spite, however, of the tendency to mysticism, he showed singular flashes of insight in matters historical and economic, and intellectually was certainly ahead of Robert Owen. He may be said to 212 have set himself the task of learning all life by whatever means and at whatever expense, in order to devote himself to the new religion, “whose great aim is the swiftest possible amelioration of the moral and physical condition of the poorest and most numerous class.”