Later a new doctrine arose, ran through different phases of elaboration
and completion, and finally established its political power over
Western civilization. The constitution of the Church began a new
organic epoch, which ended in the fifteenth century, when the
Reformers sounded the arrival of that age of criticism which has
continued to our time…
In the organic ages all basic problems [theological, political,
economic, moral] have received at least provisional solutions. But
soon the progress achieved by the help of these solutions, and under
the protection of the institutions realized through them, rendered them
inadequate, and evoked novelties. Critical epochs–periods of debate,
protest,… and transition, replaced the old mood with doubt,
individualism, and indifference to the great problems… In organic
periods men are busy building; in critical periods they are busy
destroying.
Saint-Simon believed that the establishment of socialism would begin a
new organic age of unified belief, organization, co-operation, and stability.
If Communism should prove to be the triumphant new order of life Saint-
Simon’s analysis and prediction would be justified. Oswald Spengler
(1880-1936) varied Saint-Simon’s scheme by dividing history into separate
civilizations, each with an independent life span and trajectory composed
of four seasons but essentially two periods: one of centripetal organization
unifying a culture in all its phases into a unique, coherent, and artistic form;
the other a period of centrifugal disorganization in which creed and culture
decompose in division and criticism, and end in a chaos of individualism,
skepticism, and artistic aberrations. Whereas Saint-Simon looked forward
to socialism as the new synthesis, Spengler (like Talleyrand [Talleyrand-
Périgord, Charles-Maurice de (1754-1838)]) looked backward to
aristocracy as the age in which life and thought were consistent and orderly
and constituted a work of living art.
