SAINT-MARTIN, Louis Claude de (1743-1803), known as “le philosophe inconnu” from the fact that all his works were published under that name, was born at Amboise of a poor but noble family, on the 18th January 1743. By his father’s desire he tried first law and then the army as a profession. While in garrison at Bordeaux, he came under the influence of Martinez Pasqualis, a Portu guese Jew, who taught a species of mysticism drawn from cabbalistic sources, and endeavoured to found thereon a secret cult with magical or theurgical rites. In 1771 Saint-Martin left the army in order to become a social preacher of mysticism. His conversational powers made him welcome in the most aristocratic and polished Parisian salons; but his missionary zeal led him to England, Italy, and Switzerland, as well as to the chief towns of France. At Strasburg in 1788 he met Charlotte de Boecklin, who initiated him in the writings of Jacob Boehme, and at the same time inspired in his breast a semi-romantic attachment. His later years were devoted almost entirely to the composition of his chief works and to the translation of those of Boehme. He died at Aunay, near Paris, on the 23d October 1803....
His chief works are— Lettre à un ami stir la Revolution Française; Éclair sur l'association humaine; De l'esprit des choses; Ministère de l'homme-esprit. other treatises appeared in his Oeuvres posthumes (1807). Saint-Martin regarded the French Revolution as a sermon in action, if not indeed a miniature of the last judgment; its result was to be the regeneration of society by a destruction of its abuses. His ideal society was “a natural and spiritual theocracy,” in which God would raise up men of mark and endowment, who would regard themselves strictly as " divine commissioners” to guide the people through the crises of their history. This mystical dictatorship was to rest entirely upon persuasion. In like manner all ecclesiastical organization was to disappear, giving place to a purely spiritual Christianity, the doctrines of which constitute a species of theosophy. Their philosophical basis in Saint-Martin is the assertion of a faculty superior to the reason, which he calls the moral sense, and from which we derive our knowledge of God. In man, and not elsewhere, is to be found the key to the divine nature. God exists as an eternal personality, and the creation is an overflowing of the divine love, which was unable to contain itself. The human soul, the human intellect or spirit, the spirit of the universe, and the elements or matter are the four stages of this divine emanation, man being the immediate reflexion of God, and nature in turn a reflexion of man. Man, however, has fallen from his high estate, and matter is one of the consequences of his fall. But the divine love, united to humanity in Christ, will work the final regeneration or restoration of all things.
Comp. Gence, Notice blographique (1824); Caro, Essai sur la vie et les doctrines de Saint-Martin (1852); Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi, vol. x. p. 190; Matter, Saint-Martin, le philosophe inconnu (1862); Franck, La philosophie mystique en France à la fin du dix-huitième siècle (1866).
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