Saint-Simonianism

Abstract

The notion of a ‘quest for truth’ prompted contradictory responses. Inherent in the concept was the notion which emerged in the nineteenth century that truth resided in the process of open-ended inquiry, for that process reflected the reality of mind and world. Solutions were not to be found.² Yet ‘quest’ alternatively implied an attainable goal, and thence derived systems which initially defined the knowing process, and explored the implications that definition had for private and public issues. The rejection of doctrinaire eighteenth-century philosophy spawned both scepticism and new, dogmatic systems, and the attraction of Mill and Carlyle to Saint-Simonianism shows this movement in action. Likewise, Marian Evans was to oscillate between the views that truth resided within process or within system: the examples of Mill and Carlyle prompted her consideration of the problem, and her final assent to the view of truth as process led her to literature as the genre which could best express this hard-won philosophical position, and encourage others to adopt it.

To have been hurried by a generous enthusiasm into any vagaries, however strange or absurd, does no permanent injury to any man’s reputation or prospects in life, when once the delusion is over.¹