"The man who was born Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, and who died in poverty surrounded by a group of young disciples who looked upon him as the prophet of a new religion, must be considered something of an eccentric, as was Fourier, his younger contemporary. But, unlike the latter, whose origins and behavior were utterly bourgeois, Saint-Simon led a life as a cavalier as the name he renounced."