writings. Faithful imitators of the men of the Revolution, they
never stopped to ask if their schemes for reform were in
conformity with human nature. They too were erecting a
chimerical society for an ideal man, and were persuaded that the
application of their dreams would regenerate the human species.

Deprived of all constructive power, the theorists of all the ages
have always been very ready to destroy. Napoleon at St. Helena
stated that ``if there existed a monarchy of granite the
idealists and theorists would manage to reduce it to powder.''

Among the galaxy of dreamers such as Saint-Simon, Fourier, Pierre
Leroux, Louis Blanc, Quinet, &c., we find that only Auguste Comte
understood that a transformation of manners and ideas must
precede political reorganisation.

Far from favouring the diffusion of democratic ideas, the
projects of reform of the theorists of this period merely impeded
their progress. Communistic Socialism, which several of
them professed would restore the Revolution, finally alarmed the
bourgeoisie and even the working-classes. We have already seen
that the fear of their ideas was one of the principal causes of
the restoration of the Empire.

If none of the chimerical lucubrations of the writers of the
first half of the nineteenth century deserve to be discussed, it
is none the less interesting to examine them in order to observe
the part played by religious and moral ideas which to-day are
regarded with contempt. Persuaded that a new society could not,
any more than the societies of old, be built up without religious