During the course of the Thirties reformatory ideas make their way into French Romanticism from all sides. If we try to trace them back to their source, it is not possible to stop before Saint-Simon. In Count Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (born in 1760), the only descendant of the famous Duke de Saint-Simon who wrote the private chronicles of the court of Louis XIV., France, which showed so little interest in the drama of _Faust_, herself produced a nineteenth-century Faust, a genuine Faust in the matter of restless genius and irresistible craving after both theoretical and practical knowledge of everything in the universe. He is less acute and sagacious than the hero of Goethe's famous poem, but his mental horizon is wider, his aim a grander one, and his whole endeavour of a higher nature. He begins where Faust ends. His plans for cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, and for the canalisation of Spain, remind us of the undertakings of the latter years of Faust's life. Saint-Simon was in turn soldier, man of fashion, engineer, company-projector, philosopher, scientist, political economist, and founder of a religion; he was a man who possessed almost every talent. In his youth he spent a large fortune, believing himself to be heir to the dignities of peer of France and grandee of Spain and a capital of 500,000 francs; but his father and the Duke de Saint-Simon quarrelled, and he inherited nothing. He sank into abject poverty, worked as a copyist nine hours a day for a thousand francs a year, and in 1812 was reduced to living on bread and water. In despair, he one day made an attempt at suicide; he shot out one of his eyes, but recovered. The attempt at suicide, too, reminds us of Faust. Disciples came to his assistance, supported him, were instructed by him, and founded one periodical after another to propagate his ideas.