worthy to be quoted as a Fourier confession of faith, is more conclusive yet. "If we rise to this conception, a truly religious one, that all the manifestations of the faculties of human nature were designed by its Author for a useful employment, that nothing exists in him, in his passional no less than in his intellectual constitution, or physical organization, which is not called to contribute to social harmony, to the good of the collective mass, and of the individual; if we seek a form of society which shall call forth the free exercise of all these faculties, which shall employ advantageously all the passional forces of which the human heart is the focus, we shall do precisely what Fourier has done. Making no account of the prejudices which condemn such or such a manifestation of human nature, as soon as observation had revealed to him a passional force, he sought to discover the social use which could be made of it, and finally succeeded in demonstrating that there is really not a single passion of which a social use may not be made, and, consequently, that there is not one which is fatally doomed to produce evil, disorder, here below. "It is in these conditions, apparently so rash, and which at first sight seem to indicate only a madman, that the author of the Theory of Association has always placed and maintained himself for the construction of the whole of his vast system. "Thus, then, the excellence of human nature, such as God made it, the acceptation of all the inclinations (penchants) which it bears with it, here is Fourier's point of departure, his primitive fundamental datum. Hence he is led to interdict all restraint as a legitimate means of acting on men. It is only by attraction, by charm, that he obliges them to accomplish their task in society, but in a society organized differently from ours, in which duty is almost always painful, and the practice. of goodness little else than self-sacrifice. "The words of Jean Paul, which I have cited at the head of the biography of Fourier, He cut no one of the fibres which vibrate in the human soul, but attuned them all,' these words apply admirably to Fourier, and can wholly apply. only to him. It would be impossible to characterize the phalansterian philosophy better than by these words. Here, in fact, is our fundamental dogma, a dogma which is admitted only with restrictions, more or less numerous, and all very inconsequent, by the other philosophical schools which engage the attention of man and society. In admitting the goodness of the nature of man, and the holiness of all the inclinations which God has placed in his heart, and which nothing but false social combinations can convert into vices, (for is not our civilization like those Harpies which befouled and changed into impurities whatever they touched?) in admitting, I say, these bases, we are led by the irresistible force of logic to adopt the views which the disciples of Fourier profess on social conditions. This first point conceded, we are, unless we show ourselves illogical, phalansterians, completely phalansterian. Let us, on the contrary, question the native excellence of man, we forthwith fall into systems of repression and constraint, in which every liberal view is an exception, in fact, an inconsequence; and we cease from that moment to be really phalansterians, whatever parts of the system we may in other respects adopt." - Charles Fourier, sa Vie et Théorie, pp. 311-314. What can be more to the point? The goodness, the excellence, the perfection, as we said, of human nature, and the holiness of all its inclinations, passions, or tendencies, are here expressly affirmed, made the point of departure, the fundamental dogma of the phalansterian school, -so essential, that he who accepts this dogma is a phalansterian completely, and that he who calls it in question is not and cannot be a phalansterian. Let it not be said that this applies only to man in his state of primitive justice and sanctity, before transgression; for so to restrict it would be to make sheer nonsense of Fourierism, or at least to reduce very consideraably the novelty of Fourier's boasted discovery. All, who know any thing of Fourierism at all, know perfectly well that it affirms this of human nature as it now is, if taken for what it is in itself. Human nature, according to it, has lost nothing, has undergone no change, suffered no essential modification, by the Fall; and requires no change, no renewal, no intrinsic succour, to recover from the effects of the Fall. Does not Mr. Brisbane deny the depravity of human nature? Does not Mr. Godwin attribute the evil solely to the "false medium" in which it acts? Does not even The Phalanx assert the purity and sanctity of the springs of action, and confine the wrong solely to the external direction and application of the action? But let us hear a poet, M. Auguste Demesmay, whom Fourier loved : "Cesse donc, à la fin, une entreprise vaine; Qu'on peut guider, — mais non dompter." According to Dr. Pellarin, it is not possible to corrupt the passions. All that can be done is simply to modify the form under which they are manifested. Human nature is to-day what it always was, for nature is the same at all times and places; and we have now, even to-day, only to descend to the bottom of the heart, to learn the will of God, and what is suitable to man. "We may," he says, "it is true, by the aid of education, give a certain direction to ideas; we may inspire such or such a mode of seeing on certain points, and consequently modify the form under which PASSION, that great and universal motive power of the human being, shall manifest itself; but to prevent it from being born in the human heart, to stifle it, is impossible. In vain do we attempt to force a passion from following its natural tendencies, to compel it to renounce the end which has been assigned it, or to make it deviate from the end originally imposed upon it by the hand of God himself. Do what we may, it will not cease to aspire always to it; and indirectly and circuitously, whenever it cannot do so directly." — Ib. pp. 307, 308. And again he says, "In this alternative between nature, ONE at all times and places, like the thought of God, of which it is the expression,in this alternative between nature, always perfectly consequent in the attractions which it impresses on living beings, and the incoherent principles of society, contradictory one to another, and all more or less wretched, we do not hesitate to decide in favor of nature; from it alone we take our own compass, and from it alone we demand the criterion of social things, much surer, much more constant, than all the variable rules, created, according to the necessities of circumstances, to serve as stays to the diverse societies which we see sharing the earth among them, and no one of which societies is entirely in harmony with the natural inclinations of our race. To ascertain what is suitable to man, we have only to descend to the bottom of our heart, learn what it demands, and accept that interior voice as a holy revelation, a divine appeal to our true and legitimate destiny."-Ib. pp. 318, 319. This is sufficient to establish our first proposition, that the Fourierists assume, as their point of departure, the perfection of human nature, and the essential holiness of all its passions, instincts, and tendencies, and not only as it was before the Fall, but as it now is. But Christianity denies this, and asserts that man by sin lost the justice and sanctity (justitiam et sanctitatem) in which he was originally constituted. Therefore the doctrine of the Fourierists is repugnant to Christianity. But The Phalanx asserts that the Fourier school admits the Fall. We reply, that it does not admit it in the Christian sense, and, properly speaking, in no sense at all. The Fall, according to the Fourierists, is not a fall; for it is the passage from the first social state to the second, in the ascending scale. They recognize in the life of Humanity seven phases, corresponding to the seven phases of individual life; namely, Birth, Infancy, Youth, Maturity, Decline, Decrepitude, and Death. Maturity is the Apogee, or Plenitude; Birth, Infancy, and Youth belong to the ascending scale; Decline, Decrepitude, and Death, to the descending scale. Edenism, or the social state which obtained before the Fall, and of which, according to Fourier, some vestiges lately remained among the South Sea Islanders, corresponds to Infancy; and the Fall is the passage from this to savagism, which corresponds to Youth, and elevates the race one degree nearer the Apogee, or Plenitude, and therefore is a rise, not a fall. "The first period [Edenism]," says Mr. Godwin, and he reports Fourier's doctrine correctly, "has a limit, since it is necessary that man should acquire power and force. When milk ceases to be agreeable to the child, when its growing wants demand a more substantial nourishment, a painful crisis, DENTITION, Or Teething, furnishes it with instruments for grinding and assimilating the stronger kinds of food. In the same way, the creation of the instruments of power and force is a painful crisis for humanity; for the production of science, art, and industry is effected during those incoherent periods. which can produce neither happiness nor harmony, since their mission is to create that industry and those sciences which are the means and materials of harmony. 66 Many natural causes brought about the rupture of the first society, the principal of which was the increase of population, which gradually reduced the primitive abundance, and changed it into scarcity. So soon as this was felt, the harmonious tie was broken, the feeling of individual selfishness began to control men, and the Primitive Association was dissolved! "Here we have the great social fact which Moses has impressed upon his Sepher. Eve, the Will of Man, corrupted by the Serpent, an emblem of cunning, cupidity, and selfishness, seduces Adam, the Universal Man. The tree, covered with fruits, symbol of material wealth, is the determining cause, and the serpent the potential cause, of evil. "The tree, which was the source of life [death?], was also the source of good and evil. It was only by eating of its fruits, that man lost his primitive ignorance [innocence ?], and that he will begin, through a life of sorrows, to learn, to know, to discover. After the Fall, Adam, the Universal Man, driven from Paradise, was deprived of the blessings of the first society, the elements of which are dissolved at his death. The death of Adam, the Universal Man, is the dissolution of the primitive humanitary unity, and different peoples cover the earth under the name of his children. Humanity is no longer one man, but many men. Adam is condemned to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, until the time of his social redemption, when the serpent's head will be bruised by the annihilation of selfishness. The seed of the Woman, or volitive faculty of Man, restored to its true passional destiny, will bruise the head of the serpent under its feet." Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier, p. 36. From this it appears that the Fall of man was the Dentition or Teething of humanity. The theologians, who have mourned over the Fall, and lamented the loss of Eden as a curse, have been as unreasonable and foolish as the mother who should weep to find her child cutting its teeth. One does get some new notions by studying in the school of Fourier, it must be confessed. But the Fourierists are very inconsistent in calling this transition a curse, for it is no more to be regretted than the passage from helpless infancy to lusty yonth, and was absolutely necessary, if man was ever to attain to power and force. But how repugnant all this is to the Christian doctrine of the Fall, of the primitive disobedience which brought death into our world, and all our |
