general understanding was, that he meant simply to say to his subscribers, "don't be alarmed at all about this matter; if any poor fellow has got any thing on his mind which he wishes to say, give him a chance to say it."

It was interesting to notice the effect produced by these articles on different classes of readers. At tracted by the novelty of the headings, almost every one, at first, seemed disposed to 'dip into' them. But by the time two or three chapters had made their appearance, much the greater part began to draw off, and go around as carefully as though they were coming into the vicinity of an infected district.' And yet from the natural distrust of their own knowledge, which most men feel, this class generally thought it not best to make much stir about the matter, lest perchance there might be a wisdom and a merit in the articles, hidden indeed to them, but discoverable by others. Some old men, of plain common sense and strict habits, who read a newspaper as they do a book, would never admit the idea that this column was not to be read along with the rest; and they did absolutely day by day toil through it, often turning back to read a sentence over the second and third time, and failing at last to understand, they came to the conclusion, (good, honest, charitable souls,) that their early education had been neglected, and that there had been great discoveries in the world since their day. Young ladies of a romantic turn of mind, living in families where the Tribune was taken, and who had already mastered Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and were regular admirers of that peculiar kind of poetry which comes from Boston and the region thereabout, were at once attracted by these articles; and as they could not by any means understand them, they supposed them something allied to transcendentalVOL. IV.

8

ism, and read on for a long time. under this impression, until some intelligent friend corrected the mistake, and told them that this was another matter altogether.

The pamphlet whose title heads this essay, seems to be a reproduction of these articles in a more compact form, done up for permanent usefulness. It may be that we are mistaken on this point; but the picture of the ground plan,' and the description of the sacred legion,' made very deep impressions upon us; and though we have no means at hand for testing the statement, we conclude that this book is only the summing up' of the old articles. The writer, Mr. Albert Brisbane, has in these pages unfolded to us a new plan of social organization, invented or discovered by Charles Fourier, a native of France. (We use two words here somewhat different in their character, so as to give the reader his choice, for we ourselves do not pretend to say as yet what Fourier did.) Mr. Brisbane claims simply to be a disciple and an expositor, not an originator. Whether or not he has been true to his master, we have no means of knowing. We have never yet been fortunate enough to see the works of Fourier, though we made inquiry for them at the Tribune Buildings,' where we supposed we should be sure to find them. The question arose why it was that the works of so splendid a philosopher (as is claimed) were not more known and read, at least among those who have long been his ardent and devoted followers. We are not aware that the writings of Fourier, as a whole, have ever yet been translated into the English language, though the events of the last few years would seem to have created a pressing demand for them. Fragments of his works from time to time make their appearance in the 'Phalanx,' or in other periodicals which advocate social science. But the English

world has as yet no means of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the character of Fourier's mind, or the wonders of his philosophy. Our knowledge of him and of his doctrines is derived solely from the writings of his admirers and expounders in this country. We make this confession, because we would not seem to have an acquaintance with the subject before us, which we have not in fact. Yet without any great amount of historical knowledge, it is not hard to make out the main idea of what Fourier claims for himself, and we feel prepared to look at the subject in the light of certain well known truths. We think we can apply to the system unfolded by him certain tests which will try its validity.

Charles Fourier was born at Besancón in France, in the year 1772. He was the son of a merchant. After closing a collegiate education in his native city, he was at the age of eighteen engaged as clerk in a commercial house in the city of Lyons. He retained his place in this establishment for a little season, until his strong desire for information led him to connect himself with another mercantile house as traveling agent. By this means he was enabled to visit most of the conspicuous places throughout the continent, and to gather a large fund of facts touching the social life and manners of European society. He did not limit his inquiries to the common objects of interest which meet the passing traveler. His attention was called to the vast inequalities in the conditions of men; to the deception, falsehood and treachery, every where prevalent in social intercourse; to the cruelty and injustice of the wealthier classes in their treatment of the poor; to the wide spread corruptions of commerce and trade; -all indicating, as it seemed, some deep seated disease-something radically out of order in social organization. Still, wide as were his trav

els, he could find no country where he could pursue his peculiar course of investigation better than in his own. It must be confessed that a scene was opened in France during the active period of Fourier's life, peculiarly calculated to attract the attention and enlist deeply the sympathies of a thoughtful mind like his. He had but just come of age at the breaking out of the French revolution. During the season of his youth, he had looked upon a state of society so deplorably wretched, that the ablest pens have labored in vain to depict it in all its horrors. Oppression had made men mad. The evil effects of tyranny and misrule had been for centuries accumulating, until they were heaped upon the nation-a crushing, intol erable burden. The popular mind was every where wrought into a kind of frenzy. All things were fast getting ready for that stormy outbreak of passion, which came at length with such wild, ungovernable, aimless fury. Carlyle (we think it is) has compared the French nation at this period to a wounded monster, groaning and writhing in pain, but with no knowledge whence the pain proceeds, or how relief is to be gained. We regard it as creditable alike to the head and to the heart of Fourier, that he was not a careless, unthinking spectator of the scenes that were then passing. His early acquaintance with the details of commercial business enabled him to glance from this outward wretchedness and calamity into the world of their causes. He was enabled to know what was passing behind the scenes. There he saw selfishness waging a fiendish war with selfishness a perfect anarchy of interests, where each individual was toiling and struggling to keep the uppermost place. permost place. Fourier had no heart to join in such a contest. With a mind naturally elevated and upright, averse to all those petty meannesses which make up so large a

part of some men's whole lives, he stood apart, a gloomy and indignant spectator. So early even as the year 1790, a little before the breaking out of the revolution, having just closed his collegiate education, and previous to his entering the mercantile house at Lyons, he visited Paris. This was his first sight of the great metropolis of his nation, and his mind was naturally awake to observe all that was passing around him. Unlike most young men of his age, who would have looked up on Paris only as a grand theater of pleasure, where all things had been made ready for the indulgence of passion, or at the best, only as a capital position for sight seeingFourier entered it with the aims of a philosopher. He walked its streets busied with serious and weighty thoughts. The scene which Paris presents to an inquiring stranger is at all times intensely interesting. The metropolis, not of France alone, but of the world, it opens to the traveler in its various departments more themes of rational investigation, than any other place in Christendom. But the scenes which were passing there in the year 1790, were of a strange and peculiar interest. Paris was a miniature of France, or we might without impropriety say it was France itself. It must have struck every one acquainted with the details of the revolution, how all things in that long and bloody contest center about this one point.

Fourier was permitted to look upon Paris on the very eve of this popular outbreak. He mingled with men who were already heated and infuriated with passion-driven on madly under a sense of injustice and flagrant wrong. He was as yet but a youth. He had just stepped forth from the quiet retreats of learning, where he had been living in converse with the calm and philosophic minds of other days. Every true youthful scholar is more or less a dreamer. A light goes forth from

himself, tinging every object with a beautiful but deceptive coloring. He had been looking at men under the strong illusion of the imagination, as they sat discoursing in the schools of Plato and Aristotle, or walking thoughtfully in the groves of ancient learning, meditating on truth and immortality. From the silence of the study, he passed at once into scenes of savage strife. Instead of meeting his lofty ideals, men thronged before him in the shape of fiends and monsters. His whole nature was shocked at the spectacles which met his eye during his sojourn at Paris.

We can not follow out the life of Fourier. It would require more space than we can spare. We wished simply to introduce him to the reader, and to explain some of the reasons why his mind should have taken the direction it did. One or two little incidents are related of him, which, though comparatively trifling in themselves, are nevertheless valuable, as illustrating the bent of his mind, and the nature of his work.

While at Paris he had occasion to purchase a particular kind of apple, of which he was very fond, and which he had often bought in the country. He was surprised at the price demanded, no less than seven pence per apple. He had often purchased the same article in the country at the rate of a dozen for three farthings. The apple was therefore selling at Paris at one hundred and twelve times its usual original cost.

Nine years after this visit to Paris, Fourier was employed in a commercial house in Marseilles. The storm of war had now rolled off from France itself, but its thunders were heard in the distance as they broke along the south of Europe, and on the coast of Africa. The French nation looked like the surviving company of a shipwrecked crew, who, having toiled all night with the tempest, find themselves at the first

glimmer of morning on a wild and rocky coast, their bark dashed to pieces-their companions in the waves-and they themselves cold, and hungry, and desolate. While connected with this house in Marseilles in the year 1799, Fourier was appointed to superintend a body of men, who had been hired to cast secretly a large quantity of rice into the sea. This rice had been hoarded up by speculators, and had been kept on hand month after month, while the people were famishing, in hope of still more extravagant profits, until it was totally spoiled. This circumstance affected the mind of Fourier deeply. It was about this time that he began to exclude himself from society, and give his mind more entirely to his peculiar studies.

The task which Fourier set before himself was no less than thisto find out the causes of those great and wide-spread evils, under which the human race was groaning, and to provide a grand and sovereign remedy. It was no partial and superficial relief which he proposed to bring-it was not to be confined to French society-it was to be deep, radical, universal and perpetual-it was to carry its healing influences to all the hidden sources of disease. The great problem was how to get rid of evil-how to cast out this devil whose name is 'Legion,' from human society, and bring man at once into a paradisiacal state. Fourier had in his mind a great thought, all will confess. If he should prove at last to be only a dreamer, we will agree at least, that he dreamed on a magnificent scale. There was a certain loftiness about the mind, that should ever set itself to so sublime an undertaking.

It is sufficient for our purpose in this place simply to state, that Fourier claims to have found that for which he sought. Starting with the idea that the great war of interests, which at present prevails in the

world, where one man's selfishness comes into deadly conflict with the selfishness of another, is the cause of all that extravagance, and waste, and social wrong which we every where see; and that the present organization of society leads necessarily and inevitable to this war; he aims to discover, and claims to have discovered, a plan of organization for society, which leads just as necessarily, just as inevitably, to an opposite result-that is, it grows out of the very nature of his new plan, that one man's interests are and must be another man's interests, so that the two fall at once into harmony, and can not be discordant. In the workings of this social machine, there shall be no chance for any jar, simply because all disturbing causes are excluded. This result is to be secured by a nice balancing of all things according to the fixed laws of nature, so that what each man is to do, is rendered attractive to him, and not repulsive, as in the present order of things. You may be always sure of each man's coöperation in the manner desired, simply because he is encircled by such motives, that he is made continually to feel and know that his happiness depends on his doing it—and it is an old truth that all men desire happiness. So soon, then, as the human race shall come into this new social organization you shall no more hear of evil, of selfishness, of strife. All these are cut off, cast out by the very nature of the plan. They vanish into space at the waving of the magic wand, that calls into being this new social order. We believe we have not exaggerated in this statement. Fourier claims that his plan has its foundations laid deep in nature-that it is no chimera launched at once from a poetic brain-that it is a science fixed as Astronomy itself-painfully elaborated by long years of silent study. He claims for it absolute perfection, as he ought to do if it is a science. This

was no half-way work according to his idea. His plan of society, when once established, was to secure an absolute exemption from evil. All was to be as clear and serene, as "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." We dwell upon this point the more particularly, because our strong prevailing impression is, that the mass of the Fourierites in this country, are falling a great way behind the mark-that they are a set of miserable backsliders-that they no more preach the gospel of good tidings which Fourier taught, than Unitarians and Universalists preach the Gospel of Christ-and that if their master were now to rise from the dead and come among them, his first work would be to lash them up to duty. We do not mean by this, that when any writer in this country attempts, as Mr. Brisbane has done in the pamphlet before us, to set forth any thing like a complete view of Fourierism; he does not recognize this claim to perfection. We mean simply that among the mass of those who have embarked in this new scheme, there does not appear to be any expectation of such a result-that common sense or something else, has so far got hold of them, that they can not quite believe what Fourier taught. Nevertheless this was the original claim, and in our review of the system, we intend to look at it only in this light. If it is a science it will stand this test, and if it is not a science what is it? In studying the system of Fourier as first set forth by his expounders on this side the water, there is the best evidence in the world that he claimed for it this entire perfection. That evidence is found, if need be, in the fact that he makes no provisions for any refuse. The "ground plan" of his edifice tells of no prison rooms, where evildoers may be brought to correction. We have examined it carefully. There is a most liberal outlay for

granaries, and store-houses-for public squares, and court-yards, and gardens-for council, reading, library, exchange and banquet rooms, and the like; but we can find nothing, throughout the whole establishment, which does not whisper of harmony and peace and love. However, we are not to be restricted to this mere negative evidence. turn to the direct statements. here we shall no longer venture to use our own words. We have no confidence in ourselves. We have no idea that we could go straight for a single line in this peculiar kind of philosophy. Let Mr. Brisbane speak for himself.

which

And

"Fourier discovered the laws of universal unity, or the laws which govern creation in its five grand spheres or movements: 1st the material movement, or the laws govern the movements of the heavenly bodies, or universal matter; 2d, the aromal, or the laws which regulate the distribution and influences of the imation-animal, vegetable, and mineral; ponderable fluids on the kingdoms of cre3d, the organic, or the laws according to which God distributes forms, properties, colors, flavors, etc., to all created things; 4th, the instinctual, or the laws according

to which God distributes instincts and passions; and lastly, the social, or the laws which govern the succession and mechanisms of the societies of intelligent beings throughout the universe.

"From a knowledge of these laws of universal unity, Fourier deduced the true and natural system of society, distinct for tice, will produce social order and harman, and which when realized in pracmony upon the globe-a reflex of the harmony which reigns in the universe."

We bring forward this passage at the present time only to show what is claimed for the new science. There are some items in this extract for farther consideration. may perhaps gather Mr. Brisbane's own untrammeled opinion more clearly from his preface to the

We

write like an expositor. reader,' where he does not of course

"The institutions and tendencies of the

associated or combined order are in pertions of truth, justice, and love, enterfect harmony with the highest conceptained in theory by the world, and which