It conceded that Catholicity had been the true Church down to the pontificate of Leo X., because down to that time its ministers had taken the lead in directing the intelligence and labors of mankind, had aided the progress of civilization, and promoted the well-being of the poorer and more numerous classes.  But since Leo X., who made of the Papacy a secular principality, it had neglected its mission, had ceased to labor for the poorer and more numerous classes, had leagued itself with the ruling orders, and lent all its influence to uphold tyrants and tyranny.  A new church was needed; a church which should realize the ideal of Jesus Christ, and tend directly and constantly to the moral, physical, and social amelioration of the poorer and more numerous classes,—­in other words, the greatest happiness in this life of the greatest number, the principle of Jeremy Bentham and his Utilitarian school.

His disciples enlarged upon the hints of the master, and attributed to him ideas which he never entertained.  They endeavored to reduce his hints to a complete system of religion, philosophy, and social organization.  Their chiefs, I have said, were Amand Bazard and Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin....

Bazard took the lead in what related to the external, political, and economical organization, and Enfantin in what regarded doctrine and worship.  The philosophy or theology of the sect or school was derived principally from Hegel, and was a refined Pantheism.  Its Christology was the unity, not union, of the divine and human; and the Incarnation symbolized the unity of God and man, or the Divinity manifesting himself in humanity, and making humanity substantially divine,—­the very doctrine in reality which I myself had embraced even before I had heard of the Saint-Simonians, if not before they had published it.  The religious organization was founded on the doctrine of the progressive nature of man, and the maxim that all institutions should tend in the most speedy and direct manner possible to the constant amelioration of the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of the poorer and more numerous classes.  Socially men were to be divided into three classes,—­artists, savans, and industrials or working men, corresponding to the psychological division of the human faculties.  The soul has three powers or faculties,—­to love, to know, and to act.  Those in whom the love-faculty is predominant belong to the class of artists, those in whom the knowledge-faculty is predominant belong to the class of savans, the scientific and the learned, and in fine, those in whom the act-faculty predominates belong to the industrial class.  This classification places every man in the social category for which he is fitted, and to which he is attracted by his nature.  These several classes are to be hierarchically organized under chiefs or priests, who are respectively priests of the artists, of the scientific, and of the industrials, and are, priests and all, to be subjected to a supreme Father, Pere Supreme, and a Supreme Mother, Mere Supreme.