L E T T E R S

255Letter Nr. 19[To Sir unknown]London, March 28, 1831Sir,Since your departure from London my health had been in a bad stateand it is with great difficulty that I can write you these few lines to thank youfor your kind letter which gave me real pleasure written as it was under thetrue inspiration with St. Simonist good will. Your words whatever high value Iattach to them were almost unnecessary to engage me to adopt your doctrine.Nature prepared my mind for that divine social religion. A life full ofsuffering, deep reflection and attentive examination of the ills of present daysociety have made me for a long time the most ardent enthusiast of theprinciples of St. Simon.I call that religion divine because it is a religion of nature, a religionthat every right mind and every deep intelligence desires to practise and to seepractised generally. It seems to me that the goal of St. Simon is to give t oChrist’s law its primitive purity and to make of it a social legislative code, auniversal and practical religion which Christ did not realize. As soon as thelegistes took it in hand, they made it antisocial, St. Paul, Timothy and theothers. And humanity was groaning under the cruel perversion of a laweminently beautiful in itself because it recognized all the moral, physical,intellectual needs of our nature and of each individual of our species.It is with difficulty that I can get away from the dazzling effect ofeloquence well calculated to banish every melancholy idea of the human kindperverted as it is today. I am convinced that until the time when all can bemade to accept the great truths proclaimed by the legislators and orators,humanity will go through for along time the same circle of labours and misery,alternatively martyr and victim. For if ever a small corrupting influence