But M. Dolléans

with a capital of £50,000. devotes himself to the study of a more important one of which full information is available--this was "New Harmony" in Indiana, U.S.A.

The point was to substitute a new organisation for an existing communistic organisation, namely, that of the Rappists. The Rappists had succeeded, but each of them desired to have his share of the capital of the Society instead of leaving it undistributed. This ending might have enlightened Owen as to the ultimate consequences of his experiment in admitting that everything there was for the best. He proceeded to the United States in 1825, and made a great to-do over his foundation. He enlisted Maclure, a rich American (who contributed 150,000 dollars), a number of philosophers, and eight hundred visionaries and persons of unsettled temperament, dreamers of either sex, each one of whom believed communism to be the ideal, provided that his system was accepted, as well as some adventurers and knights of industry.

On May 1st, 1825, the experimental or preliminary society was constituted. Every one is under a general duty to place his capacity at the service of the community, for each member of which an account is opened, the value of his services being carried to his credit and his various expenses to his debit. In the result this beautiful arrangement merely ended in the most complete anarchy. At the end of six months the industries left by the Rappists disappeared and there was neither labour nor control. Those who might feel disposed to work were unwilling to do so for the benefit of the idle. A large amount of discussion and disputation ensued, and a convention was nominated, which, on June 5th, 1826, adopted a constitution which confuses juridical and moral questions. It is preceded by a declaration of general principles, in the front rank of which there

figure community of goods, equality of rights and of duties, sincerity and honesty in all acts, freedom from responsibility and the abolition of punishments and rewards.

The assembly, which consists of all the members of the community of either sex of more than twentyone years of age, is possessed of legislative power; the executive power is vested in a council consisting of three ministers, elected by the assembly, and of a secretary, a treasurer, a commissary and six superintendents, each placed at the head of one of the six departments of the community. Who appoints these superintendents? Their subordinates of more than sixteen years of age, subject to ratification by by the general assembly. This restriction was not sufficient to invest these departmental chiefs with authority, they were dependent for it upon those whom they employed, while at the same time it was their duty to furnish the executive council daily with their opinion upon the persons under their authority. It would be difficult to find an organization better adapted to promote impotence and dissensions.

When Owen returned after the lapse of a year, he found"New Harmony in dissolution, but with remarkable optimism he did not despair. He accepted the dictatorship, but on April 15th, 1828, he was obliged to admit the failure of an experiment which had cost him personally 200,000 dollars. I will not exaggerate this negative result; it is obvious that the elements of which the population which came to make the experiment was composed were not the most suitable for ensuring its success. One is none the less entitled to enter it on the debit side of the communistic account.

These experiments failed to discourage this practical man from his visionary dreams. From 1834 until his death he published a weekly newspaper, the "New Moral World," in which he

persisted in proclaiming his unsectarian millennium, a new moral world which was to abolish individualistic competition in the interests of communism.

CHAPTER VIII

FOURIER AND THE AMERICAN PHALANX

i. A maniac's ravings-Attraction of the passions—The passions and the constant persistence of speciesSeries or groups of passions-The phalanstery--Division of profits Experiments Victor Considérant.

ii. Experiments in the United States-The North American Phalanx.

I

FOURIER, born in 1772, was the son of a draper at Besançon. A brilliant scholar, he found trade unworthy of himself, and conceived a hatred of business avocations, which was all the greater in proportion as they disturbed his maniac's ravings. His love of order was such that in his walks abroad he would take the measurements of a building or a public garden. In his passionate devotion to flowers, he desired to possess every variety of each species and to cultivate it. He adored music, and was full of enthusiasm for military displays.1 He was an ardent admirer of the universal harmony which enabled the stars to travel through an eclipse without colliding, and drew therefrom the conclusion that humanity must obey a principle of harmony as the planets obey the law of gravitation.

1 Pellarin, "Fourier, sa vie et ses théories."

It did not occur to him that Newton had merely ascertained the relations between these phenomena and that these phenomena existed before Newton's time, and he fancied that on the day when a genius analogous to that of the English philosopher should have discovered this principle, all the difficulties of social existence would be dissipated.

Fourier believed that it had fallen to him to discover this principle-it was that of the attraction of the passions. He expounded it in his book "Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées Générales" (1808), and later in his "Traité de l'association domestique et agricole" (1822). In 1825 he settled in Paris, formed a small school, and published his "Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire." Fourier was of the same mind with Bentham in his protest against asceticism, to which he opposes the "doctrine of happiness,' which consists in the possession of a number of passions and of means to satisfy them. Duty comes from men, attraction from God. It is necessary to study attraction. If in existing society the unloosing of the passions produces fatal results, this fact proves that society is badly organised. This is a new form of Rousseau's assertion that "man is born virtuous and that society has corrupted him."

He believed that the passions are legitimate because they exist, but he departed from the principle of the persistence of species, and was convinced that the passions differed in species and variety as determined since the creation of the world. He said

"The series of groups is the method generally adopted by God in the distribution of the kingdoms of natural history and of created things. Naturalists in their theories and their pictures have unanimously admitted this distribution; they could not reject it without seceding from nature herself and falling into confusion."

Fourier was not familiar with the works of Lamarck and did not anticipate those of Darwin. He believed that philosophers had only to discover the order in which the Creator had arranged the species. Similarly he had only to discover the order in which the passions were arranged.1 He continues :

If passions and characters were not subject to distribution in series of groups, like objects in the kingdoms of natural history, man would be out of harmony with the unity of the universe; there would be a duplication of system and want of conformity between mind and matter. If man would attain to social unity, he must seek for the way in the system of series which God has imposed upon nature.

A series of the passions is a league or affiliation of various small conglomerations or groups, each of which exercises some species of passion which develops the genus of the passion for the entire series. Twenty groups cultivating twenty kinds of roses form a series of rose-growers as regards genus, and of white rose-growers, yellow rose-growers, moss rose-growers as regards species.

I will not prolong this explanation, but in order that his system may be fully understood, I must cite this passage:

Passions which are confined to an individual are not admissible in this mechanism.

Three individuals, A, B, and C, like their bread in three degrees of saltness: A likes it with little salt, B with a moderate, and C with a large quantity; these three merely form a graduated discord, incapable of the graduated harmony which is required for a collection of groups which are related to one another in an ascending or descending order.

A regular group requires not less than seven to nine separate units to make it susceptible of properly balanced conflict: one cannot, therefore, speculate upon individuals in series or groups of passions.

1 Fourier "Œuvres Complètes," vol. iii., p. 19. Théorie de l'unité universelle.