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The Mystery of Truth: Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's Enlightened Mysticism
David Bates
"... what truth! and
what error!"
--Goethe on
Saint-Martin 1
It is hardly surprising
that Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), the philosophe inconnu of
late Enlightenment Europe, remains almost completely unknown outside of the
marginalized and exotic disciplines of esoterism, theosophy, and mysticism.
Although influential in certain circles, Saint-Martin failed to penetrate the
mainstream of Enlightenment thought, and what influence he did have in
philosophy was largely felt outside of this period altogether, revealing itself
in figures such as Maistre, 2 Lamartine, 3 and German Romantics like Franz von Baader. 4 In his own lifetime Saint-Martin was met with
incredulity by the forces of rationalism. Voltaire was given a copy of
Saint-Martin's 1775 text Des erreurs et de la vérité by a friend
of d'Alembert. Voltaire later commented to the mathematician, "I don't believe
anyone has ever printed anything more absurd, more
obscure, more crazy, and more stupid." 5 In the Tableau de Paris, Mercier
described Saint-Martin and his martinist followers as a sect which turned its
back on the paths opened up by sound physics, chemistry, and all natural history
in order "to run headlong into an invisible world only they perceived."
Saint-Martin taught that the objects we see around us are only "fantastic and
deceptive images" and that the truth lies precisely where we cannot see it,
Mercier explained. "Physical experiences," the cornerstone of the dominant
sensationalist doctrine, were for the martinists only "errors," an "eternal
source of folly and deception," wrote Mercier. 6 One review of Saint-Martin's works described
their effect as analogous to that of a "pyramid covered in hieroglyphs, erected
by an unknown man in a public square," in other words, completely mystifying. 7 The revolutionary Barnave would link martinism
with all the other "metaphysical follies," which were, he believed, the result
of an overly speculative tendency in eighteenth-century thought. 8
For his part
Saint-Martin rejected what he considered to be the anti-spiritual tendency of
Enlightenment thought. Responding (as a mature student) to the professor Garat,
one of the idéologue followers of Condillac, at the École normale in 1795,
Saint-Martin wrote:
I always admire how you
protect youself from materialism by endorsing ... the teachings of Condillac.
Although I read little, I have just gone through (very quickly, it is true) his Essai sur les origines des connaissances humaines and his Traité des
sensations. Whether I have poorly grasped it, or I haven't your secret, I
have come across almost no passages which do not repel me; and, I can say, have
not encountered one which attracts me. His statue, for example ... seems to be a
mockery of nature... For me, each of the author's ideas appears to be an attack
against man, a veritable homicide. 9
Mystic thought, it
seems, must oppose Enlightenment. At best, mysticism during the period of
Enlightenment will be seen as its "underside" 10 or as the preparation
for coming anti-Enlightenment Romantic doctrines. 11 Indeed, the end of the Enlightenment in
France saw a marked interest in esoteric thought and a mystic sensibility. 12 However, the attempt to link mysticism and
Enlightenment has almost always been a critical attempt to discover the
"superstitious" core of eighteenth-century rationalist thought. In this
perspective the study of mystic thought in its own terms can only have
antiquarian value, for the mystic approach to truth is, it is claimed, always in
the form of a secret, revealed knowledge that can never withstand disciplined
analysis. Saint-Martin finds his way into history as either a footnote in large
books on Romantic thinking, or as the protaganist in largely incomprehensible
ones examining esoteric thought. 13
Here, I do not want to
claim that Saint-Martin should be "included" in the Enlightenment, but a
sympathetic reading of this complex and commonly misunderstood thinker can, I
think, help broaden our understanding of late eighteenth-century European
philosophy, particularly its important (though often neglected) transcendental
and theological dimensions. It is of course only within the "rationalist"
readings of Enlightenment thought that the idea of an irrational or speculative
dark side can be elaborated. It may be possible here to redefine the relation
between the "mystery" at the heart of mysticism and the pursuit of truth that
marked all Enlightenment thought; it was not simply a matter of the
sensationalists rejecting metaphysics as error and the mystics rejecting the
physical world as deception. The boundary was never wholly effaced, and
attention to error and illusion can help elucidate eighteenth-century
conceptualizations of this border zone in which humanity wanders. Error was
understood to be both an obstacle and a path to a hidden and elusive truth.
Saint-Martin's very metaphors of wandering and errancy will help connect his
Enlightened mysticism with the mainstream of epistemological inquiry in late
eighteenth-century France.
It is important to
recognize that for Saint-Martin the revelation of truth was never simply a
matter of secret ritual and initiation. His earliest influences were in fact
philosophical. Saint-Martin tells us that his own path began with the
seventeenth-century thinker Jacques Abbadie and that he read, while a student of
law, the works of Voltaire and Rousseau. 14 He did, it is true, have an early association with the mystic circle associated with Martines de
Pasqually, the shadowy Spanish Catholic who came to France and established a
secret society called the order of the "Élus-Cohens." Saint-Martin had abandoned
the study of law for an army commission in Bordeaux, where he encountered the
order and was admitted in the fall of 1768. Leaving the army to become
Pasqually's secretary in 1771, Saint-Martin was fully immersed in the martinist 15 reworking of Judeo-Christian thought,
encapsulated in Pasqually's one surviving text, the Traité de la
réintegration des êtres (1771). 16 Yet, as he developed his own thinking,
especially after the death of Pasqually in 1774 during an extended stay in
Saint-Domingue, Saint-Martin moved away from the cultist traditions and became
interested in the more philosophical, reflective approaches to mystical
questions. 17 From thinkers such as Swedenborg he learned
of the intensity of the inner, intellectual mystic experience. Saint-Martin's
encounter with Jakob Boehme after 1788 was especially important in this regard.
Not only did Saint-Martin incorporate some of Boehme's ideas into his own work,
he also translated the German philosopher's books into French toward the end of
his life. 18 Saint-Martin shunned the ritualistic aspect
of the mystic cults, especially later in his life, and tried to reach out to all
mankind through his many writings. 19
In his philosophical
studies Saint-Martin aimed to penetrate the very relationship between human
errancy and truth, the conditions that mediated the world of appearances, and
the unifying totality that both encompassed and escaped it. Far from rejecting
the "physical" in favor of wild and groundless metaphysical speculation,
Saint-Martin explored the tension-filled relationships of experience of the
manifest expressions of a "universal totality" within a corporalized and
temporalized world.
Saint-Martin's first
major work was Des Erreurs et de la vérité, and the title already reveals
this basic idea: that truth is always a unity and error the essential characteristic of the varied realm of the multiple. The philosophy of
Saint-Martin is not simply a retreat into mysticism; it confronts the human
desire to flee from the mystery which is at the heart of his existence. He
pictured man arriving at the threshold of truth, unable to cross but nonetheless
drawn to the infinite. 20 "In this pitiful degradation, no longer
seeing the fixed and simple qualities of unity, [man] is reduced to wandering
[errer] around the temple which conceals them, and to which he is denied
access." 21 Alone among worldly beings we felt the need
to account for the "phenomenon of the existence of things" and to search for the
solution to the "great problem" of our own existence. Humanity senses that there
must be some kind of relation between itself and the beyond, between itself and
this source which our instinct naturally engages. 22
The starting point of
Enlightenment epistemology was the idea that the human mind was separated from
the truth. Philosophy was in fact the method which would guide us toward this
elusive goal. However, the very condition of error made this journey dangerous.
As d'Alembert wrote in his Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia:
Between these two
limits [of human knowledge] there is an immense distance where the Supreme
Intelligence seems to have wanted to deceive human curiosity, as much by the
innumerable clouds it has spread there as by some flashes of light that seem to
burst out at intervals to attract us. One might compare the universe to certain
works of a sublime obscurity whose authors occasionally bend down within reach
of those who read them, seeking to persuade him that he understands nearly all.
We are indeed fortunate if we enter this labyrinth and do not leave the true
road! Otherwise, the flashes of light intended to lead us there would often
serve only to lead us further from it. 23
Although for many
Enlightenment thinkers reason might keep us on a straight path, the connection
to this sublime truth was very complex and in the end relied on a sometimes
mysterious affinity between our own sensibility and the essence of truth itself. 24
Like so many mainstream
philosophers of the Enlightenment Saint-Martin described humanity's separation
from truth in spatial terms. What distinguishes his own work is the way he
conceptualized the relationship between the errant human mind and the divine
truth of the universe. Yet like d'Alembert, Saint-Martin believed that the
foundation of any true philosophy was the recognition of essential limitation.
Man, he wrote, "throws himself onto these dangerous paths which divert him
forever from his true road." 25 Separated from the "light," how can we alone
light the torch which must guide us along the paths? Clearly, truth and error
were not, in Saint-Martin's mystic philosophy, simply defined in terms of access
to "divine secrets." According to Saint-Martin, error was caught up with the
varied and changing modes of a concrete reality expressed in space and time, a
world that concealed the essential unity of all things. For Saint-Martin,
though, and for most eighteenth-century philosophers, appearances must be the
path to this other reality. He does not, then, advocate the rejection of "mere
appearances" (an escapist mysticism), but he does underline the danger of
remaining caught in this realm of these appearances, where everything is visible
and control seems possible. The task was to work through the errors toward a
larger truth. One of the most disconcerting situations for a traveller is to
encounter two opposite roads without knowing which one leads in the right
direction. Saint-Martin does not counsel inaction, nor does he advocate waiting
for a divine sign. The traveller must choose; he must not refuse his "inner
conviction." 26 In many ways Saint-Martin's ongoing task was
the elucidation of this problematic, internal relationship with truth.
In Des Erreurs et de
la vérité Saint-Marin begins with the observation that man does not seem to
acknowledge the obstacles between his own perceptions and "science" (knowledge),
as if he never considers the shadows created by any enlightening gaze. 27 The material forms of the sensible world
cannot be mistaken for the principles which underlie them; the differences
conceal what never changes:
it is a truth at once
profound and humiliating for us, that here below differences are the only source
of our knowledge [nos connaissances]; since if it is from here that the
relations and distinctions of beings derive, these same differences conceal the
knowledge [la connaissance] of Unity and prevent us from approaching it. 28
The varied forms of
nature are linked by the unchanging principles which govern their appearance. 29 Science, for Saint-Martin, is the penetration
of these forms and the revelation of the principle,
revelation in its most fundamental aspect as the manifestation of something
hidden, not "direct communication from the divine." 30
The forms of nature are
not discrete, independent parts that can be added together to create an
increasingly accurate picture of nature. Each particular form, Saint-Martin
says, evoking Leibniz, exists in the world as "the extract in miniature of the
universal," and must be "the image of this universal." Nature, writes
Saint-Martin in an echo of Plotinus, is only "the inferior and altered image of
unity," 31 the very limit at which God's voice "dies
out." 32 In Saint-Martin's view this is the foundation
of human errancy: we are immersed in the world of forms which present to us only
the distorted figures of universal Being. Knowledge, then, can only be
accomplished through a surpassing of the visible world into the world of
principles. And yet how would this be possible when we can perceive only the
deceptive products of these principles? Saint-Martin warns: "we can only ever
know here collections [assemblages], and not the principles which
assemble [assemblent]." 33
With some images of
"distillation" or precipitation Saint-Martin opens up the possibility of insight
in the midst of deception and separation. The violent clash of forms can, he
implies, occasionally disentangle the heterogeneous elements which confuse and
distort the direct manifestation of the principle, which always "accommodates"
itself to specific circumstances. 34 If man, for example, continually manifests a
variety of characteristics, it is possible to separate from him those
"heterogenous elements with which he is mixed" and recognize "the integral
principle of his being, like the perfect metals found in the midst of the most
compounded amalgams." 35 Often a "shock" is required to "faire sortir
la vérité." If truth is compounded with the material which concretely expresses
it, it is sometimes possible to manipulate these materials so that they
interact, allowing the truth "to precipitate" or "separate itself" from its
material constraints.
But this will,
Saint-Martin implies, always be a momentary and unpredictable insight.
Ordinarily, we cannot translate from the form to the principle. We cannot travel
from the "curved lines" which constitute and legislate the corporal world to the perfect "straight lines" of the superior order. 36 The errant paths of the curved dimensions
cannot be traced and mapped as the paths to knowledge. 37
The rather unusual
doctrine of straight and curved lines leads us to one of the key aspects of
Saint-Martin's philosophy, the fallen condition of humanity. Saint-Martin's
version of the fall is not the fable of the Garden of Eden but a philosophical
fall from the spiritual into the concrete. "The true serpent," he wrote, "is the
spirit which deviates [s'écarter] from the straight line." Sin is
essentially the first error. Man's original dwelling space was the square, the
only pure form (Saint-Martin rather cryptically claims) composed of straight
lines. The circular is the beginning and end of all form, a state of confusion,
and the prison of l'esprit. 38 The images of errancy link the first crime of
man with the straying nature of all form; this allows Saint-Martin to describe
the condition of humanity as an in-between state "above" the endless variation
of the temporal and the material and yet "below" the perfection of unity and
regularity. Man has strayed from the path and by the very nature of the "curve"
he cannot merely retrace his steps and emerge from his predicament. More
accurately, in order to retrace these steps the line from which he diverted must
be found and recognized. 39
The doctrine of the
fall is for Saint-Martin less "moralistic" than it is a way of describing the
essential paradox of humanity. While it is obvious that man has an intense
desire for truth and knowledge, unlike the beasts or other entities which remain
within their self-enclosed worlds, this knowledge always seems to elude him.
Saint-Martin suggests that it is as if he has lost something which he seeks to
find again. If it is true that "[w]e are born in the infinite, we cannot form
any idea of our native country," although the desire is still within us, linking
us to a higher dimension. 40 Saint-Martin explains this paradox as the
result of man's spiritual existence becoming confounded with a material one, two
states of being that are "diametrically opposed" to one another; he is at once
mortal and immortal, great and small, free in his intellect, but bound to the
world by laws independent of himself. 41
Man, it might be said,
has "sublime" needs, yet is forever incapable of satisfying them, evidence of
some "fatal transposition," as the mystic "Lodoïk" (the
Comte de Divonne) once wrote. 42 Unlike the plants and animals, which manifest
their principle to a greater or lesser degree over the course of their life, man
finds himself "in opposition with his principle," which puts him in "disharmony"
with the world, which leads him to illusion and lies. Spiritually without limits
yet imprisoned in a perishable, transient body, humanity is in "exile" in the
world, wandering in the face of appearances. 43 Another mystic in this same circle wrote that
fallen man has been cut off from the direct light of divine knowledge and sees
now only "an indirect reflection, an inferior substitute for the pure and holy
light of which his crime has deprived him." 44 Sensations arrive without will and they
constantly vary, providing no real continuity, Saint-Martin observes. 45 The body is only an "obscure veil which hides
the true light"; it is the source of illusion and the instrument of crime. 46 It is wrong to confuse the "corporal
envelope," then, with the thinking being trapped within. Sensation and thought
are radically different, and cannot be explained in terms of each other. 47 Nor can we reach for the source of our purest
being through the deformed instrument of our body. Man is a "fugitive from
himself." 48
Breaking through the
opposition of "innate ideas" and the tabula rasa, Saint-Martin puts forward the
idea that man is what may be called a "table rasée." For Saint-Martin the mind
is where the traces of a more perfect life still exist despite their being mixed
with the accumulated (sensual) impressions of our long passage in the corporal
world. The right conditions must be sought in order that these roots might
spring up and flourish. 49 Specifically, Saint-Martin describes how
errancy can lead to insight, which he sees as access to the universal. The
possibility of "inner conviction" in the face of deception and appearance arises
because man is already connected to this universal in some way; the pursuit of
truth is the search for reunification, an effort at traversing the distance that separates man from the divine. This distance is only
recognized as a gap because in a way it still connects him by drawing him into
this open space with the promise of some fulfillment of the journey.
The theological
dimension of this relationship between truth and errancy is one way of
describing the uneasy disjuncture between the human desire for what lies beyond
the immediate and the visible and the failure to penetrate the barriers that
constantly block this desire. What is desire, as Condillac had already said, but
the recognition of a lack. 50 As Saint-Martin writes,
Desire results only
from the separation or the distinction of two analogous substances...; and when
the aphorists [gens à maximes] say that we cannot desire what we do not
know, they give us the proof that if we desire something, it is absolutely
necessary that there be a portion of this thing which we desire in ourselves,
and which thus cannot be seen as being entirely unknown to us. 51
Our desire for
knowledge of the universal means we share that knowledge in some fragmented
state, Saint-Martin suggests. The axiomatic truths of the exact sciences, for
example, do not "express" a truth which reason infers; there arises an accord
(convenance) between the intrinsic justice of these axioms and the "spark of
truth which shines in our conception." Insight and not logical order is the
method that leads us to truth. With insights into the nature of the world we
begin to gain some understanding, or at least feeling, for the universal source
of all things, the "unknown being that we call God" as Saint-Martin puts it. The
human soul elevates itself through these insights: "in the discovery of partial
axioms it looks to give itself up to this total truth which dominates it...." 52
But if human acts are
the manifestation of the divine, the individuality of these acts in the concrete
world tends to obscure their divine origin. Human reason might be described as
"a kind of debris and degradation of this divine light...." 53 Therefore if we reveal the universal in our
moral activities, we are also in a sense removed from this totality by the very
nature of our activities. Humanity operates within space and time, and action is
in essence the particularization of the infinite, as the forms of the world are
"corporalizations" of the immaterial, "temporalizations" of eternity. 54 The works of men "are nothing more than
transpositions ... limiting themselves to giving things another place." 55 Thus for Saint-Martin
man is in a sense a "diminished God" (un Dieu dévêtu), 56 who draws from the unity of the divine in his
moral acts yet never attains this exalted position. 57
This is the central
idea of Saint-Martin's work: error is the condition of our being as it seeks to
expiate the original crime, which is a deviation from the (straight) path of
truth. As the great martinist scholar Robert Amadou comments, for Saint-Martin,
"[e]very error is only transposed truth ... a perverted truth." 58 It is this critical relationship that informs
Saint-Martin's discussion of the concrete forms of human existence: the nature
of language, society, and politics which he turned to in his later writings.
In his first major book
Saint-Martin denied that human languages could be simply the product of habit
and convention. The diversity of these languages was no proof of their arbitrary
nature. These differences, he wrote, were only "an accidental flaw, and not in
its nature." 59 For Saint-Martin, the many languages of the
present were all deviations from the pure first language of man, the pure
communication with the divine intelligence, a "secret" and "interior" language. 60 The origin of convention in language, he went
on to argue in his next book, is the lapse into the corporal world, where
communication is no longer perfect but conducted through external signs and
expressions, which can only be distorted versions of the primitive signs that
constituted this originary communication. 61 With Rousseau, Saint-Martin rejected much of
the Enlightenment speculation on the origin of language. He thought it
impossible the language could be invented before the medium of language itself,
that human beings could somehow create among themselves a system constructed
purely through convention. 62
During the French
Revolution, however, Saint-Martin developed a more thorough theory of language.
Proscribed from the capital because of his noble status, Saint-Martin had
returned to his birthplace, the town of Amboise. After the Terror he was chosen
by the residents to represent them as a student (though [End Page 645] he
was now in his fifties) at the newly opened École normale. Back in Paris,
Saint-Martin attended the lectures given by the Idéologue Garat on language and
the nature of mind. On 9 ventôse, an III, Saint-Martin rose to challenge Garat's
"sensualist" doctrine, derived from Condillac. Their debate was subsequently
published. 63 Saint-Martin argued here that the conceptual
difficulty surrounding the origin of language proved that man had within him
some kind of social and moral nature, expressed in language, an idea which he
would develop further in various writings of this period.
Saint-Martin's
confrontation with idéologie produced detailed reflections on the nature
of the sign and the relationship of language and human intelligence. He studied
De Gérando's massive work on signs and ideas, 64 and he worked on responses to a series of
prize questions sponsored by the Class of Moral and Political Sciences, a branch
of the new French National Institute of Sciences and Arts, which had been
created in 1795 to replace the old Académie Française. 65 In 1799 Saint-Martin worked on a question
that asked: "Déterminer l'influence des signes sur la formation des idées."
Drawing on earlier reflections, Saint-Martin translated his own mystic
philosophy into the language of idéologue linguistic psychology.
Saint-Martin began his
1799 essay on signs by establishing the relationship of sign and signified. The
sign is in general "the representation or indication of something separated or
hidden for us." The sign marks an entirely "new region" for mankind, one where
material sensation and spiritual thought become one, enclosed under the same
seal. The sign in effect operates for something that can no longer make its own
appearance, the inner ideas of the spiritual being enclosed in a physical
envelope. The idea has become detached from its native country, the "region of
ideas," and must travel now through subsidiary means to reach its destination.
For this reason Saint-Martin attributes desire as the radical origin of the
sign: the idea lacks its own means of expression, it has lost the pure
continuity of spiritual identity and must find a way through the sensible world
to this higher destination. If the idea is "sovereign," the sign is its
"minister," without which its power could not be effected, Saint-Martin
explains. 66 Yet entering into the world of forms, the
ministers of our ideas do not always find their way through to the "luminous
region" that marks their true goal, for this intermediate zone is like a "mass
of vapours" obscuring the pathways. The problem is that signs, being necessarily
linked to the region of the sensible, have an inherent tendency to deviation and imperfection, an inevitable inclination toward
errancy. 67 This errancy has taken us so far from the
pure realm of ideas, Saint-Martin claims, that we almost cease to believe this
region even exists. 68
The solution to this
predicament for Saint-Martin lies not in the perfection of these signs, the goal
of the analytic philosophers. Such a task is impossible; there is an
ever-present disjuncture between the sign and the idea precisely because the
sign navigates the "mixed order" and the idea can live only in the free and
simple order of truth. Our mistake is to follow the twists and turns language
takes in this process instead of maintaining a distance between our signs and
our ideas. In the spirit of Rousseau's essay on language, Saint-Martin says that
"the more our languages have rushed into the torrent, and have become inventive
in artificial ornaments, the more they have had the means to develop errors and
vices in men,without providing much in the way of real sustenance for our
thought." 69 We must try to break through the everyday
need for external signs, returning to the inner light of the higher order that
informs our thoughts. The sentiment of this superior region can be recognized
only in brief intervals of elevation, or revelation, as our ideas move us across
this space of separation. The light of this region "bursts forth and occasions
an affection higher than the idea itself," which is a "tableau mixte" of light
and shadow. This intervention into the sublime is the true goal of our ideas;
the idea is in fact only the sign of this infinite desire, and thus participates
in the inevitable failures that mark any sign. 70
In an earlier text, a
response to a prize competition of the Prussian academy on the problem of
releasing people from error and superstition, Saint-Martin described the
activity of "true poetry" as one way of entering this sublime region, which is
"complete, calm, luminous, which gives repose to all the faculties." The poetic
voice transcends the specificity of concrete objects and their signs and allows
the "real language" to be felt once again, the true voice of our spiritual life
to re-emerge. Originary poetry (poésie primitive), Saint-Martin wrote,
was worthy of its name,
capable of communicating light to men and dissipating the errors which plague
him, only by painting the tableaux which were of another order, whose models
were not at [the poets] command, that is to say, only by retracing these sublime
objects which are almost completely lost to us, only by
initiating men into the knowledge of the laws of the supreme director.... 71
The poetry of
tradition, then, is the continuing history of these divine announcements, these
important threads, which are given to man to "guide him in the labyrinth of
terrestrial life," where he always seems to match every step forward with as
many falls back again. 72 This idea reemerges in his 1799 essay on
signs. Descending into his corporal existence (the Idéologue project, according
to Saint-Martin), man will, it is true, learn to control the natural signs, but
it is only by ascending along the progression of signs (which for Saint-Martin
includes ideas, the "signs" of spiritual desire) that he "will find the sublime
region of the mother impression, or of the primordial desire, with the language
that is proper to him." 73 The progression of language moves toward
reintegration with the source of all reality.
From his first major
text on error and truth Saint-Martin was interested in applying his own mystic
thought to concrete social and political problems. This interest only
intensified during the period of the Revolution. In turning his attention to the
problem of human association, Saint-Martin rejected the dominant explanations:
that social order was created through the violent action of oppressors or was
simply the result of a volontary accord of some sort. As with language,
Saint-Martin saw a conceptual impossibility in the idea that society is purely
"natural" (relations of physical need and force) or simply a product of
volontary human formation. The theory of pure force as the foundation of order
among human beings is an "atrocity," according to Saint-Martin, while the idea
that discrete individuals came together to form society spontaneously is a
"chimera," a logical impossibility, as he explained. 74
In the aftermath of
Revolution, civil war, and Terror, Saint-Martin would later conclude that if we
cannot find within ourselves the elements which could produce this "sublime
pact" that is society, it is probable that the materials for this "vast edifice"
came from beyond the "simple and reduced human order." Therefore, for
Saint-Martin, the goal of all human association can only be the very point from
which it has descended, as the result of some "alteration." The very disorders
and irregularities that continually plague human society offer evidence of a
higher order. "In fact, one could say that in the very disorders of his thought,
man is a being who searches to regain the point from where he [End Page 648] fell." 75 If humanity was simply playing out its
natural inclinations, this feeling of imperfection (not to mention the
imperfection itself) would never arise. The very violence of man's progression
in the world implies that he is not where he ought to be:
it is only by violent
and convulsive efforts that men go toward this elevated goal [haut terme],
and they only climb laboriously toward this first stage of the level, an
irresistible demonstration that proves they are fallen; because if they were at
their natural point, we would see everything proceed smoothly and regularly.... 76
It is the disjuncture
between the desire for order and the inability to achieve it that marks both the
separation from and the connection with the divine totality. The goal of
association is thus the task of rehabilitation, an expiation aimed at
reintegration. And for this reason, Saint-Martin writes, it must be inspired
from above.
The individual being,
Saint-Martin concludes, is not the starting point of social order but rather a
product of this order. By looking at human beings as discrete entities (which
they admittedly are from a material point of view) we are inevitably led to the
paradox of association: individuals either give up liberty (independence) or
have it forcibly taken away. The paradox disappears if, as Rousseau implied in
the Second Discourse, we begin with the fact of social communion, understood as
a divine gift. 77
As Saint-Martin sees
it, the "general will" is the starting point for social organization, understood
as the voice of this community identity. With Rousseau, he agrees that the
general will "is not at all formed from the will of all." Identity is anterior
to difference, and is what allows these differences to arise and define
themselves.
[N]ever will the
general will form itself from particular wills; on the contrary, it is the
particular wills that must form themselves from the general will, that is,
...the particular wills must conform to this general will which surely exists
before the particular wills, since, according to the principles which direct
this work, the general will can only be the unique source of the universal and
divine thought.... 78
Interests, then, are
the inevitable consequence of our material needs; yet these interests, no matter
how common to various individuals, will never found a social order, since they
are by definition transitory and unstable. They can only ever be the basis of
"partial agglomerations." This kind of harmony is only a harmony among objects,
constructed through contingent relations, and thus cannot "link itself" with
that "grande harmonie" that would provide a real stability. Integration gives
way to reintegration: "Yes, the true social contract is only the adhesion of all
the members of the political body to this ancient general will which is before
him...." 79
The general will, then,
is the voice that speaks to all men despite the variations and deviations that
condition every specific social community. This is why the astounding variety of
human societies throughout the world cannot be taken as evidence that no common
foundation for order exists. The very ubiquity of social formation points to a
fundamental origin of order. No matter how degraded the unity of any one
community, it seems as if the "eternal general will" pierces the clouds with the
rays of its "inalterable clarity." 80
This has important
consequences, Saint-Martin believes, for the theory of practice in human
communities. The goal of human association must be the recovery of a higher
unity, and therefore its guiding force cannot be drawn from the myriad of
conflicting desires that exist in any community of fallen individuals.
Elections, writes Saint-Martin, cannot be tolerated. They are illusory "because
they encroach on regions of which man no longer has neither key nor map."
Instead of leading to a restoration of social order to itshigher level, these
capricious actions can only lead to its devastation. The universal wisdom,
source of the "eternal general will," alone chooses its ministers and provides
them with the means to carry out their tasks. Human elections are useful only
for "domestic management." Thus for Saint-Martin all political thought is really
in the end religious thought, and all government is theocracy, an idea that he
would explore in greater detail in his reflections on the French Revolution. 81
Unlike many other
religious thinkers of the era, Saint-Martin was able to interpret the French
Revolution within theological categories, while living and working at the very
heart of the revolutionary torrent, even though he was of noble birth and
suffered many hardships in this period. Though he became a target of suspicion
during the Terror, partly because of his unorthodox writings, and partly because
of his personal associations with the Duchess of Bourbon, the sister of Philippe
Égalité, Saint-Martin gave money to the army to buy equipment, and this helped
him to avoid prison and the guillotine. He was, like other nobles, stripped of certain political and financial privileges, and was forced
to leave Paris in 1794. However, it seems that he was spurred to address the
political challenge of the Revolution by more positive developments,
specifically, his election in Amboise to the electoral assembly and his move to
Paris to attend the École normale.
In a short book
published in 1796, his Lettre à un ami ou Considérations politiques,
philosophiques et religieuses sur la Révolution française, Saint-Martin
elaborated on the political ideas outlined in some of his previous work. For
Saint-Martin the Revolution was not, despite its disruptive and violently
destructive character, and its anti-religious ideology, something to be fought.
Writing before Joseph de Maistre's better-known Considerations on France,
Saint-Martin saw the uprising precisely as the manifestation of divine power.
The Revolution was the appearance of a new form of human organization that had
broken through the ossified hierarchies and empty structures of Ancien Régime
Europe. The Revolution, for Saint-Martin, was an "abbreviated image" of the Last
Judgment, a "magical operation" to restore order. 82
In his attempt to
understand this radical turn Saint-Martin looks first to the effects of
revolutionary power and concludes that because it struck most forcefully the
clergy and the monarchy, these classes must have had the most sins to expiate.
The ministers of the divine intelligence in the human world had closed their
eyes to the truth, and abused their position. Thus France becomes, through the
operation of revolutionary action, the example of Europe. The king of France was
in essence the king of Europe, the leader of the strongest nation in this
community of nations. The Revolution that would break down the old order
appeared in France precisely because France was the only nation able to defend
itself against the concerted forces of Europe, Saint-Martin believed. 83 He saw the Revolution as a recovery of sorts;
the oppressed had regained rights that were usurped over the course of the
preceding eras by the various ruling classes, all with the aid of a
"supernatural power." 84 The Revolution in France, then, was not
accomplished through the actions and ideals of individuals or groups; it acted
through the human agents that were the (chosen) people of France.
This structure is
crucial for Saint-Martin's understanding of this period in European history, for
he criticizes the individual leaders in the political realm while maintaining
the significance of the Revolution's regenerative power. In essence the actors
of the Revolution were completely insignificant or were at best conduits of
revolutionary force. The enemies of revolutionary France could not see that the
attacks on its leaders were not only ineffective but also advantageous to France. The Revolution could not be defeated "from above"
because the elimination of any one leader meant only that a new one was thrown
up to take his place. Individuals were not guiding revolutionary policy; they
were "agents employed in this great work." Europe was in the midst of a crisis,
a "convulsion of expiring human powers, struggling against a new, natural and
living power" that these old powers refused to recognize, to their detriment. 85
Saint-Martin saw this
disruptive force as the occasion for regeneration. The lesson to be learned from
this divine intervention was that human beings were unable to structure their
own society solely through their own efforts. Man's power, writes Saint-Martin,
is everywhere limited to "industry and administration," whereas society can only
ever be a product of its own "self-formation." In other words the foundational
act of social organization is necessarily outside the realm of individual
creation; the
bodies of a people and
governments form themselves from themselves, and are the natural results of time
and circumstances which man occasions or allows to be born; and it is for this
reason that the mode of this formation must so often escape our calculations [refuser
à nos calculs]. 86
The foundational laws
of society must, Saint-Martin says, have a consecrated air in order to be
legitimate, and man can hardly fulfil this task alone, something Maistre would
repeat in the coming years. The crisis of the Revolution had, Saint-Martin
believed, proved exactly this by destroying the old orders and forcing the
creation of a whole new social framework.
The crisis, writes
Saint-Martin, awakens the traces of original virtue that lay dormant in every
individual. The resistances brought forth by revolutionary excesses and the
chaos of political disorder occasion the manifestation of those hidden but
eternal principles that were always within us. Providence, like a skilled
surgeon, had "eradicated the foreign body" and the people of France were now
experiencing the usual effects of a painful operation. 87 If it was clear that human society had not
instantly regained the "pure peace" of harmony in society, this hardly meant
that the task of organization was simply the problem of ordering individuals and
coordinating interests. Unlike the beasts, whose affections were only ever
directed toward specific objects at a specific time and whose organization was
only contingent, human beings lived outside of their specific individual
relations, they "embraced in their affections ... all species, and lived in the
generality of all beings, whatever the interval of times and spaces." 88
Order, then, was not
something to be constructed out of the specific relations among individual men
but rather something to be found at a level higher than them all. Thus, for
Saint-Martin, the first step in founding this order was to search for the paths
that had become overrun after years of neglect: "if the truth can be obscured by
man's negligence, it can never be lost completely for him, since he always has
the means to distinguish it and recognize it." 89 The goal of post-revolutionary action was not
the total recreation of society but rather the preservation of its guiding
principles, the residue of truth that existed at the heart of any social order,
even amidst the forces of disintegration. The sovereignty of the people, freed
by the "surgical operation" of the Revolution, was not to be invented.
Sovereignty had to be reexpressed, rediscovered. As Saint-Martin argues, the
sovereignties of individual nations were in fact the "organs" of that "supreme
sovereignty which sends down its sanction in them." 90
For Saint-Martin, then,
the claim of political leaders to speak for the people could only ever be a
claim to announce the divine (general) will. The people could find itself only
by finding the Truth. The organs of social order were not mere representatives
of the common good. They had to be the "reflection of a power superior to them." 91 Humanity did not create its own law;
individuals could only administer and execute law. 92 The legislator in a sense discovered
preexisting laws. 93 The true "monarch" was the divinity: "Men who
find themselves at the head of Nations or of administrations could only be his
representatives or, if you like, his commissaires." 94 Saint-Martin's reference here to the
delegates of revolutionary authority who were sent to the provinces to enforce
revolutionary law and establish order in the midst of resistance sharpens the
image of political action he puts forward in this work. Authority must come from
somewhere, even if it is not always visible and cannot appear unproble-
matically to legitimate the actions of its organs. The structure of
revolutionary order was not fundamentally different from a theological political
structure. 95 The problem was locating the source of
authority and recognizing the true organ of this power.
What exactly could be
done in this revolutionary crisis, according to Saint-Martin? Writing in 1797,
Saint-Martin used the occasion of a prize contest sponsored by the Class of
Moral and Political Sciences to discuss this problem, responding to the
following question: "What are the most appropriate institutions to found la morale of a people?" In contrast to many contemporary
theories, he writes that institutions cannot serve to create a people and its
morale. They are not mere means, but instead act as the tangible mediators of an
already existing public virtue. Institutions are the "envelope, sign, or
bulwark" of social doctrine. The problem, of course, is how to return to this
originary code and regenerate our institutions, which were obliterated by the
Revolution. The world is filled, Saint-Martin observes, with a bewildering array
of contradictory views. The legislator would seem to be caught within an
"inextricable labyrinth." The legislator, then, must seek to divine the morale
of a people, the unifying force, before establishing concrete institutions. 96
The paradox, one
already elaborated by Rousseau in the Social Contract, is that the
legislator must discern exactly what is not obvious: Saint-Martin asked, "how
could the legislator himself reach this point of sublimity?" The "active
classes" who wield power in society often succumb to the temptations of abuse;
they resist regeneration as much as the "passive class" is open to it.
Saint-Martin sees this as a "restricted circle" which seems impossible to
escape; the legislator must "communicate to his nation the spirit of life" and
this means he must "himself be impregnated" with this spirit, he must sense
within himself the "force and desire to penetrate to the sources where this fire
resides." This requires more than mere insight. For Saint-Martin the legislator,
in order to "receive this spark," must purify himself of all the "extraneous
elements [substances étrangères] which, even if [this spark] might arise,
would stop it from catching fire." Only the pure legislator could thus
"communicate" this warmth to all the institutions. Institutions devoid of this
anterior spirit could never have any positive effect. 97
The desire for this
sacred flame explains in part the passion that men have for the "elevated
posts," where it is commonly held to reside. But Saint-Martin is careful to say
that this flame, like the sun, can transmit its light to all beings and never
allows itself to be usurped by any one individual or intermediary body.
Saint-Martin does not imply that the divine will can speak only out of the mouth
of one chosen monarch. As a result Saint-Martin's conclusion to the Institute's
question is less in the form of a concrete "solution" that might be implemented
in any one nation, than a pointing of the way, "showing the paths" that might
direct us to a solution that must in a sense be seen as coming toward us. The
specific forms of legislation and government Saint-Martin leaves to "other
writers" with the warning to these "new Pygmalions" that however complex the
"statue" so created, it is never a simple task to "seize the flame that could
alone bring their statue to life." 98
Saint-Martin's writings
were all efforts to show humanity that its true path lay outside the visible
forms of his material existence. The mystic element was not a retreat into
intellectual repose and inaction, however. The role of the philosopher, he
thought, was to point the way out of this region, to spur man to recognize his
superior nature. Through "negligence or bad faith" man has misunderstood the
principle of order and peace, and thus dwells in disorder. He then takes this
disorder as evidence of the arbitrary and conventional nature of his existence. 99 This disorder is, however, simply a result of
our separation from Truth, our refusal to exercise the faculties we have; we
remain, then, in the world of "lies and error." 100 Yet the very recognition of disorder, of
error, reveals our connection to a higher reality. The drive to knowledge is
predicated on both the absence of truth and the awareness of its absence. Here,
Saint-Martin offers a variation on the eighteenth-century concept of curiosity:
limitation is what drives us toward the truth.
In this context
Saint-Martin's reflections on truth and its essential mystery are, I would
suggest, linked to the Enlightenment concept of progress, which itself relies on
this dual recognition of error and of truth. Saint-Martin's enlightened
mysticism, like contemporary Enlightenment thought, denied any direct access to
truth, and advocated instead working through error to create a path toward
truth, a truth understood to be linked in some way to our innermost being.
Reading a transcendental mystic philosopher in conjunction with (instead of in
opposition to) Enlightenment suggests that despite the fact that the methods of
the rational Enlightenment were at times at odds with the more mystical
doctrines, we have too often overlooked their similarities. Truth was not
unproblematic for Enlightenment philosophers and scientists; the methods of
observation and calculation were not seen as easy roads to knowledge. The unity
of Truth was not taken for granted, even by the Encyclopédie--only God
could ever know the secret principles underlying the order of the "vast machine"
that is the universe. 101 If we can take seriously the philosophical
significance of mystic thought, as I have tried to do here, perhaps we can also
begin to take more seriously the mystical dimension of "mainstream" philosophy
of the period.
University of
California, Berkeley.
Notes
I would like to thank
the journal's readers for their suggestions and corrections; also Harvey
Mitchell, Michael Geyer, Jan Goldstein, and Steven Wolfe.
1. In a letter to Lavater on 9 April 1781, Goethe
wrote: "In dem Buche des Erreurs et de la vérité, das ich angefangen
habe, welche Wahrheit! und welche Irrthum!" Quoted in Bertram Barnes, Goethe's Knowledge of French Literature (Oxford, 1937), 84.
2. Emile Dermenghem, Joseph de Maistre mystique (Paris, 1923).
3. Christian Croisille, "L'Influence de l'illuminisme
dans la formation de la pensée romantique: Lamartine et Saint-Martin," Le
Préromantisme: Hypothèque ou hypothèse? Colloque organisé à Clermont-Ferrand... ed. Paul Viallanieux (Paris, 1975), 450-67; and C. M. Lombard, "The influence of
Saint-Martin on Lamartine," Modern Language Notes, 70 (1955), 42-44.
4. Elme-Marie Caro, Du mysticisme au XVIIIe siècle:
essai sur la vie et la doctrine de Saint-Martin le philosophe inconnu (1852)
(Geneva, 1975); Ernst Benz, Les sources mystiques de la philosophie
romantique allemande (Paris, 1968), esp. 69-114.
5. See Voltaire to d'Alembert, 22 October 1776, letter
D20361, The Complete Works of Voltaire, ed. Theodore Besterman (135
vols.; Banbury, Oxfordshire, 1968), CXXVII, 346. Cf. Voltaire to Louis François
Armand Du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, 15 October 1776, letter D20347, ibid.,
334.
6. Louis-Sebastian Mercier, Tableau de Paris,
new ed. (1782-88) (8 vols.; Geneva, 1979), VI, 233-34.
7. Antoinette L. G. La M., "Compte rendu," Bibliothèque française, 6 (an IX [1800]), 99-102.
8. Joseph Barnave, Oeuvres, ed. Bérenger de la
Drôme (4 vols.; Paris, 1843), IV, 101-3.
9. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Controverse avec
Garat, précédée d'autres écrits philosophiques, ed. Robert Amadou (Paris,
1990), 387.
10. See, e. g., the references to Saint-Martin in
Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), esp. 68-69.
11. See, e. g., Anne-Marie Amiot, " 'L'Homme de
parole' martiniste, préfiguration du poète romantique, ou: du messianisme
illuministe au messianisme poétique," Le Préromantisme, 380-97; and Annie
Becque, "Aux Sources occultes de l'esthétique romantique: l'imagination selon
Saint-Martin," ibid., 414-24.
12. See Auguste Viatte, Les Sources occultes du
romantisme (2 vols.; Paris, 19652 ).
13. For example, Arthur Edward Waite, The Unknown
Philosopher: The Life of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and the Substance of his
Transcendental Doctrine (Blauvelt, N.Y., 1970).
14. See Saint-Martin's apologetic Portrait
historique et philosophique de M. de Saint-Martin, fait par lui-même, Oeuvres posthumes (2 vols.; Paris, 1807); for his relationship with Abbadie,
see I, 58; on Rousseau see Nicole Chaquin, "Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin et
Jean-Jacques Rousseau," Dix-Huitième Siècle, 3 (1971), 195ff.
15. While technically the term martiniste referred to the followers of Martines de Pasqually, it was also applied to the
circle around Saint-Martin, especially after Pasqually's death in 1774 in
Saint-Domingue, though distinction between the philosophies was not great for
the larger intellectual community.
16. Circulated in manuscript form in the eighteenth
century, this text was published for the first time in Paris in 1899. See Gérard
van Rijnberk, Martines de Pasqually (Paris, 1935), and Viatte, Les
Sources occultes, I, 45ff.
17. As M. Ferraz wrote, in his Histoire de la
philosophie pendant la Révolution française (1789-1804) (Paris, 1889), 133,
"of all the celebrated mystics, [Saint-Martin] is no doubt the most reasonable
... he constantly rejects the theurgical practices by means of which the Jew
Martines [de Pasqually] pretended to put himself in contact with invisible
powers."
18. See Jacob Böhme, L'Aurore naissante, ou la
racine de la philosophie, de l'astrologie et de la théologie (2 vols.;
Paris, an IX-1800), and idem, Des trois principes de l'essence divine,
ou de l'Éternel engendrement sans origine (2 vols.; Paris, an X-1802).
19. See Benz, Les Sources mystiques, 69-70.
Caro, in Du mysticisme au XVIIIe siècle, 34, writes that Saint-Martin
hints in his first few works about some secret knowledge, but as his philosophy
developed, his writings "carried the mark of a more personal inspiration, and of
a more liberated method."
20. Maximes et pensées, ed. Robert Amadou
(Paris, 1963), 131: "Nothing is easier than to arrive at the door of truth.
Nothing is more rare and difficult than to enter there...."
21. Tableau naturel des rapports qui existent entre
Dieu, l'homme et l'univers (2 vols.; Edinburgh [Lyon], 1782), I,125.
22. "Réflexions d'un observateur sur la question:
Quelles sont les institutions les plus propre à fonder la morale d'un peuple?"
(1797), Controverse avec Garat, 136-37.
23. Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Discours préliminaire
de l'Encyclopédie (Paris, 1965), 36-37.
24. See my "The Epistemology of Error in Late
Enlightenment France," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29 (1996), 307-27, and
"Idols and Insight: An Enlightenment Topography of Knowledge," Representations (forthcoming, 2000).
25. Des erreurs et de la vérité, ou les hommes
rappellés au principe universel de la science... (2 vols.; Edinburgh [Lyon],
17822 [1775]), I, 3.
26. Ibid., I, 45.
27. Ibid., I, 1.
28. Tableau naturel, II,143.
29. Erreurs, I, 74-85.
30. Controverse avec Garat, 392.
31. Traité des formes, ed. Robert Amadou
(Paris, 1985), 22. To my knowledge, this edition never appeared, but the proofs
may be consulted at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.
32. Maximes et pensées, 136.
33. Pensées sur les sciences naturelles,
published with notes and introduction by Robert Amadou (Paris, 1982), 55.
34. Erreurs, II, 45.
35. "Discours sur la question suivante proposée par
l'Académie royale des sciences et belles lettres de Prusse: Quelle est la
meilleure manière de rappeler à la raison les nations, tant sauvages que
policées qui sont livrées à l'erreur et aux superstitions de tout genre?"
(hereafter "Berlin Discourse"), Controverse avec Garat, 14.
36. "Instructions sur la sagesse," Présence de
Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, textes inédites suivis des actes du colloque sur
L.-C. de Saint-Martin tenus à l'Université de Tours, ed. Robert Amadou
(Tours, 1987), 98.
37. Erreurs, II, 109, 115; "Instructions sur la
sagesse," 96-97; Pensées sur les sciences naturelles, 56.
38. "Instructions sur la sagesse," 97.
39. Erreurs, II,163-64.
40. Traité des formes, 5, 10-11.
41. Erreurs, I, 50.
42. Lodoïk [Comte de Divonne], La voie de la
science divine ... en trois dialogues traduits librement de l'Anglois de W. Law,
précédés de la voix qui crie dans le désert (Paris, an XIII-1805.), 7. This
text was heavily influenced by Saint-Martin's work, and it was addressed to the
"hommes de désirs" (a reference to Saint-Martin's L'homme de désir [Lyon,
1790]). Divonne helped to spread the ideas associated with Saint-Martin and his
circle, as one of Mme. de Staël's visitors at Coppet. See Nicole Chaquin and
Stéphane Michaud, "Saint-Martin dans le Groupe de Coppet et le cercle de
Frédéric Schlegel," Le groupe de Coppet. Actes et documents du deuxième
colloque de Coppet, 10-13 juillet 1974, ed. Simone Balayé and Jean-Daniel
Candaux (Paris, 1977), 113-34.
43. [Divonne], La voie de la science divine,
4-5.
44. Keleph Ben Nathan [Dutoit-Mambrini], La
philosophie divine, appliquées aux lumieres naturelle, magique, astrale,
surnaturelle, céleste et divine... (3 vols.; Paris, 1793), I, 29. Divonne
was instrumental in publishing this work.
45. Erreurs, I, 45-46.
46. Ibid., I, 199.
47. Controverse avec Garat, passim.
48. Keleph Ben Nathan, La philosophie divine,
III,122.
49. "Essai sur les signes et sur les idées
relativement à la question de l'Institut: Déterminer l'influence des signes sur
la formation des idées" (1799), Controverse avec Garat, 173-74.
50. Condillac, Traité des animaux, Oeuvres
philosophiques, ed. Georges LeRoy (3 vols.; Paris, 1948), I, 372b.
51. Ministère de l'homme-esprit, 351.
52. Ecce Homo (Paris, 1792), 3-6; idem,
"Cahier de métaphysique," Controverse avec Garat, 243-44.
53. Keleph Ben Nathan, La philosophie divine,
I, 83.
54. "Cahier de métaphysique," 254, and Traité des
formes, 12.
55. Erreurs, II, 241.
56. Lettre à un ami, ou considérations politiques,
philosophiques et religieuses sur la Révolution française (1795), Controverse avec Garat, 56. More crudely, man as a limited being "could be
called an excrement of the infinite." Keleph Ben Nathan, La
philosophie divine, I, 352.
57. "Cahier de métaphysique," 254: "And these moral
works, which seem the most natural to man, is to draw from the unity; it is, as
it were, to extract the sap from his marvellous [acts]; finally to make,
in the eyes of our fellows and of all the beings, a little God...."
58. Robert Amadou, introduction to Saint-Martin, Oeuvres majeures, Des Erreurs et de la vérité (Hildesheim, 1975), 17.
59. Erreurs, II, 230.
60. Ibid., II, 194-271.
61. Tableau naturel, I, 64.
62. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l'origine
et les fondemens de l'inégalité parmi les hommes, Oeuvres complètes,
ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (5 vols.; Paris, 1964-95), III, 151; cf.
Saint-Martin, "Berlin discourse," 19.
63. Their exchange was revised for publication and
appeared in the third Débats volume of the Séances des Écoles normales (Paris, an IX [1801]).
64. Joseph-Marie Degérando, Des Signes, et de l'art
de penser considérer dans leurs rapports mutuels (4 vols.; Paris, an
VIII-1800).
65. See Martin Staum, Minerva's Message:
Stabilizing the French Revolution (Montreal, 1996).
66. "Essai sur les signes," 176-85.
67. "Controverse avec Garat," 413, writing that the
institution of speech is the "transmission of the germ of speech," which can be
followed in its development, "save for the varieties that this development can
offer in the non-thinking region where it must operate."
68. "Essai sur les signes," 218-19.
69. Ibid., 231.
70. Ibid., 232-34.
71. "Berlin discourse," 23-24.
72. Ibid., 25.
73. "Essai sur les signes," 235.
74. Erreurs, II, 3-11; "Berlin Discourse," 7.
75. Éclair sur l'association humaine (Paris,
1797 [an V]), 14-22. This book was published by the Cercle Social, originally a
Girondin political club and press that in 1792 published Saint-Martin's Ecce
Homo, alongside works by figures such as Condorcet. The links between
Saint-Martin and the Cercle Social are sketchy, but see Gary Kates, The "Cercle
Social," the Girondins, and the French Revolution (Princeton, 1985).
76. Ibid., 25.
77. Rousseau, Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité, Oeuvres complètes, III, 207.
78. Éclair sur l'association humaine, 52-53.
79. Ibid., 55.
80. Ibid., 66.
81. Ibid., 70-72, 91. See Karl Epting, "Die
politische Theologie Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's," Epirrhosis: Festgabe
für Carl Schmitt (Berlin, 1968), 161-84.
82. Lettre sur la Révolution française, 58.
83. Ibid., 63.
84. Ibid., 58. See Nicole Chaquin, "Le Citoyen
Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, théosophe révolutionnaire," Dix-huitième siècle,
6 (1974), 209-24.
85. Lettre sur la Révolution française, 63.
86. Ibid., 66.
87. Ibid., 117.
88. Ibid., 68.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid., 112
91. Ibid., 93.
92. Ministère de l'homme-esprit, 293.
93. "Étincelles politiques," L'Initiation, 4
(1965), 218.
94. Lettre sur la Révolution française, 104.
95. See Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur: Von den
Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Munich, 19282 ), chs. 4 and 5.
96. "Réflexions d'un observateur," 141-45.
97. Ibid., 162-64.
98. Ibid., 165.
99. Erreurs, I, 201-2.
100. Tableau naturel, I, 140.
101. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des
arts, des sciences, et des metiers, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond
d'Alembert (Paris, 1751-65), s.v. "ordre."
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