During the next stage in the development of socialism we see the influence chiefly of German and also Russian thinkers, but it is generally international both in its principles and sympathies. The prevalent socialism found its first expression in the manifesto of the Communist Party published in 1848. The same views were elaborated by Marx in his _Kapital_ (1867), and have in later times been consolidated and modified by many writers in many lands, in the programmes of national parties and in the resolutions of international congresses. In this Introduction we have tried to give a preliminary conception of our subject, and we shall now proceed to present the leading views of the men who have taken the chief part in originating and guiding the socialist movement. ----- [1] Holyoake, _History of Co-operation_, vol. i. p. 210, ed. 1875. [2] Quoted by Adolf Held, _Sozialismus, Sozialdemokratie und Sozialpolitik_, p. 30. [3] _Ibid._ p. 29. [4] _Les origines du socialisme contemporain_, p. 67. [5] _Le socialisme contemporain_, p. iv. [6] Schönberg’s _Handbuch der pol. Oekonomie_, art. ‘Socialism.’ [7] _Quintessenz des Socialismus_, p. 12. [8] _Lehrbuch der pol. Oekonomie, Grundlegung_, p. 174. CHAPTER II EARLY FRENCH SOCIALISM _SAINT-SIMON_ The founders of the early socialism grew up under the influence of the too-confident optimism which characterised the early stages of the French Revolution of 1789. They had an excessive faith in the possibilities of human progress and perfectibility; they knew little of the true laws of social evolution—in fact, did not sufficiently recognise those aspects of life which Darwinism has brought out so clearly. These faults the early socialists shared with many other thinkers of the time in which they lived. Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, the founder of French socialism, was born at Paris in 1760. He belonged to a younger branch of the family of the celebrated duke of that name. His education, he tells us, was directed by d’Alembert. At the age of nineteen he went as volunteer to assist the American colonies in their revolt against Britain. From his youth Saint-Simon felt the promptings of an eager ambition. His valet had orders to awake him every morning with the words, ‘Remember, monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do’; and his ancestor Charlemagne appeared to him in a dream, foretelling a remarkable future for him. Among his early schemes was one to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific by a canal, and another to construct a canal from Madrid to the sea.