The doctrine of the Saint-Simonians may well be regarded as a kind of philosophy of history.[492] Contemplation of the system fills them with an extraordinary confidence in the realisation of their dreams, to which they look forward not merely with confidence, but with feelings of absolute certainty. “Our predictions have the same origins and are based upon the same kind of foundations as are common to all scientific discoveries.”[493] They look upon themselves as the conscious, voluntary agents of that inevitable evolution which has been foretold and defined by Saint-Simon.[494] This is one trait which their system has in common with that of Marx. But there are two important differences. The Marxians relied upon revolution consummating what evolution had begun, while the Saint-Simonians relied upon moral persuasion.[495] The Saint-Simonians, true children of the eighteenth century that they were, believed that ideas and doctrines were sufficiently powerful agents of social transformation, while the Marxians preferred to put their hope in the material forces of production, ideas, in their opinion, being nothing better than a pale reflection of such forces.[496] III: THE IMPORTANCE OF SAINT-SIMONISM IN THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINES The doctrine of the Saint-Simonians consists of a curious mixture of realism and Utopianism. Their socialism, which makes its appeal to the cultured classes rather than to the masses, is inspired, not by a knowledge of working-class life, but by close observation and remarkable intuition concerning the great economic currents of their time. The dispersion of the school gave the leaders an opportunity of taking an active part in the economic administration of their own country, and we find them throwing themselves whole-heartedly into various schemes of a financial or industrial character. In 1863 the brothers Péreire founded a credit association which became the prototype of the financial institutions of to-day. Enfantin took a part in the founding of the P.L.M. Railway, which involved an amalgamation of the Paris-Lyons, Lyons-Avignon, and Avignon-Marseilles lines. Enfantin was also the first to float a company for the purpose of making a canal across the isthmus of Suez. At the Collège de France Michel Chevalier defended the action of the State in undertaking certain works of a public character. It was he also who negotiated the treaty of 1860 with England, which was the means of inaugurating the era of commercial liberty for France. Other examples might be cited to show the important part which the Saint-Simonians played in nineteenth-century economic history.[497]