manufacturing industry. How far he may succeed in future experiments we cannot say; but many things are wanting to complete his views, as they have hitherto been given to the world. The absence of religious unity and discipline alone, in our opinion, is and will be constantly a source of failure in establishing communities." All, however, has now been set right by the discovery of the theory of attraction. We have only to believe that our " final destinies are proportionate to our inborn attractions," procure a square league of land, mass together four hundred families, and be happy, if we can: and if we will not be persuaded into it, we must be frightened by a superficial view of society and its evils. We must regret the semibarbarism of the middle ages, and sigh over the disappearance of some of the virtues of Greece and Rome, and believe that it was only in the sixteenth century, and in Greece and Italy alone at that æra, that art ever ruled and cherished among men the sacred fire of religion, of love, and of enthusiasm. We may believe that manners are softened, that laws are more humane, but that faith and energy are gone from among all men; that the system of prison discipline is far worse than the rack of the Inquisition; that blind superstition and fanaticism have been indeed disarmed, but that with them has departed pure faith. To prepare ourselves for Phalansterianism, we must believe that "In this state of things each individual is forced to scheme for himself, to the detriment of others; if a link of association is formed, it consists of interests in league against other interests; rich and poor, great and littleall the classes, all the industries, and all the members of each profession are in competition; in war, forming hostile coalitions to ruin each other, in self-defence. 6 "Every where,' says Fourier, we see each class interested in wishing ill to the others, and the individual interest in contradiction with the collective interest. The lawyer wishes, against his conscience, that discord should establish itself in all rich families, and create good law-suits;' the physician is unconsciously anxious that sickness should be plentiful; the military man wishes for a good war which would carry off his comrades, that he may procure advancement; the pastor is interested in the death of the rich, whose funerals are profitable; the judge unconsciously desires that France should continue to furnish annually fifty-five thousand seven hundred crimes; the monopolist desires to profit by good famines, which would double or triple the price of bread; the wine-merchant likewise is constrained to wish for 'good hailstorms' for the vine-crops, and 'good frosts' for the buds; the architect, the mason, the carpenter desire, no doubt unwillingly, a good fire, which should consume an hundred houses, to forward their trade." But the remedy is at hand for all these and countless more evils. Industry as now exercised is repulsive; we must make it attractive, and to do so, it must flow from a mode of association in which all interests agree and harmonise, instead of injuring each other; then only will man be in accordance with himself, with the universe, and with God. The following is Fourier's introductory argument : "The law of attraction governs the whole universe, the plant, the insect, and the stars, accomplishing their revolutions. The animals obey a Divine law, revealed by instinct, by attraction; all nature groups itself, associates in an harmonious concert, and accomplishes its destiny attractively. Man alone, ignorant of this Divine law, still struggles with his instincts, his desires, his passions, and attractions. In the midst of universal association and the harmony of worlds, human societies are sunk in discord and antagonism: their labours are repugnant; their relationships conflictive. Attraction, not being obeyed, becomes for man a source of suffering and chastisement. His miseries are aggravated by the knowledge of enjoyments he does not possess. Like a bee, transported to a barren rock, languishing from want of flowers to call forth its industry, man, being out of his destiny, is not the less capable of fulfilling it, and suffers in proportion to the distance separating him from harmony and unity. "Attraction in the hands of God is like a magic wand, which enables him to obtain by love and pleasure, what man can only obtain by violence. It transforms the most repugnant functions into pleasure. What can be more repugnant than the care of a new-born infant, crying, helpless, and unclean? What does God do to transform so repulsive a duty into pleasure? He gives the mother impassioned attraction for these unclean offices; he simply uses his magical prerogative—the impress of attraction. Thenceforth repugnant functions disappear, and are changed into pleasures. "We see God confine himself to the simple lever of attraction to direct the planets and the stars, creatures immeasurably greater than ourselves; is man then alone excluded from the happiness of being guided to social unity by attraction? Why this interruption in the scale of the system of the universe? Why does attraction, the divine interpreter of unity in the highest and the lowest orders of creation, the law of stars and animals, sufficient to conduct them to harmony, not suffice for man, who is a creature between the planets and the animals? Where is the unity of the Divine system, if the law of general harmony, if attraction, is not applicable to societies of the human species, as well as to those of stars and animals; if attraction is not applicable to agricultural and manufacturing industry, which is the pivot of the social mechanism? "Industry, the torment of the servant and the slave, nevertheless causes the delight of various creatures, bees, beavers, wasps, and ants, wholly free to prefer a life of idleness; but God has provided them with a social mechanism which attracts them to industry, their source of happiness. Why should he not have granted us the same privilege? What a difference between their industrial condition and ours! A Russian, an Algerine, works from fear of the whip and the bastonade; an Englishman, a Frenchman, from fear of famine, which threatens their families; the Greeks and Romans, whose liberty has been so much vaunted among us, laboured as slaves under the fear of punishment, as the negroes do now in our colonial possessions. "Such is the happiness of man in the absence of an attractive law of industry; such is the effect of human laws; it reduces humanity to envy the lot of the industrious animals, for whom attraction changes their labours into pleasures. What would have been our happiness had God assimilated us to these animals, had he impressed on us passional attraction for the exercise of all the labour to which we are destined? Our life would be a series of delights, whence would arise immense riches; while in ignorant subversion of attractive industry, we are nothing but a society of galleyslaves, of whom some few escape from drudgery and maintain themselves in idleness. These are hateful to the mass, which tends, like them, to emancipate itself from labour: from thence arise revolutionary ferments, agitators, who promise the people leisure, wealth, and happiness, and who by some revulsion, having once obtained this for themselves, enslave the multitude anew to maintain themselves in the rank of idlers, or privileged directors of the industrious classes, which is a sort of idleness." This law of association is, we are told, a continuation of the theory of the Newtonian calculation of attraction. Its means of action are, first, the division of all men into corporations or phalanges, of fifteen to eighteen hundred persons, by which agricultural, domestic and manufacturing industry are to be developed; profits distributed according to the industrial powers, capital, labour, and skill; and labour rendered attractive by the formation of labourers into groups and series, relieving each other every two or three hours, and embracing a variety of tasks by means of this division of labour, which alone, Fourier maintains, renders occupation easy. Corporativeness, or social unity, is the pivot of the system; attractive industry the motive power. The machine to be moved is a Phalanx. There are many phalanxes, but one of complete harmony must consist of a congregation of from four hundred persons to four hundred families. It is wonderful how much depends on numbers, and how accurately our philosopher can draw the line of phalangial concord and discord. It all depends on a mathematical calculation, a sum without an error in it, and the result is the two magical numbers, 400 and 1800, the limits of the domain of concord. A human parallelogram, whose sides are in the ratio of four to eighteen; an estate of humanity, bounded on the east and west by four hundred souls, and on the north and south by eighteen hundred of a like kind. The mystical numbers of Pythagoras were as dust to the calculations of Fourier. Well, let us take a full-grown phalanx, situated on an estate nine miles square,numbers again, Even so; and four hundred families, rich and poor, little and large, fat and thin, clever and stupid, good and bad, are all lodged in one huge building, the material Phalanx. Each person or each family is to contribute so much capital, either in money, skill, or labour. To the lowest class, who contribute labour alone, the Phalanx will advance the minimum common necessaries of life ;-to the other two classes, the skillists and capitalists, proportionately to their contributions to the society. Every one may raise himself out of the minimum, or suffer himself to fall into a lower class: at the year's end the entire produce of the estate will be taken by the corporation, who will first deduct the expenses of supporting the phalansterians and working the colony, including the advances to the three classes, and then divide the surplus into twelfths. Five of which are to be divided per capita among the simple labourers, whilst four others are to be shared among the capitalists who hold the 1728 shares, into which the concern's capital is divided; and the remaining three twelfths are satisfy the skillists for their practical and theoretical knowledge. the theory now for the building. We give it in Fourier's entre should be devoted to peaceful functions, to dining rooms, exchange, council rooms, libraries, studies, &c. In this centre are placed the temple, the tour d'ordre, the telegraph, the observatory, the winter court, ornamented with evergreens, and placed behind the court of parade. "One of the wings must contain all the noisy trades, as carpentery, smith-work, and hammering; it must likewise contain all the industrial assemblies of children, who are generally very noisy. "The other wing must contain the caravansery hotel with its ball-rooms, and chambers for intercourse with strangers, that they may not encumber the domestic relationship of the Phalanx. "The Phalanstery, besides its individual apartments, should contain many public rooms, called seristeries, or places of industrial and corporate accommodation. "There should be set apart, near the dining-rooms, chambers for the different groups who wish to separate themselves from the common tables. "For every occupation small rooms are contrived close to the seristeries,' or large rooms for the convenience of smaller companies. "The stables and store-rooms should be placed, if possible, opposite the mansion. The interval between the palace and the industrial buildings would serve as a court of honour, or general evolution. "Behind the centre of the palace, the lateral fronts of the two wings ought to be prolonged, to contrive and enclose a great winter court, forming a garden and promenade, planted with evergreens; this promenade can be placed only in a closed court, and is not to be open to the fields. "Not to give to the palace too extended a front, with developments and prolongations which would retard the communications, it will be convenient to double the body of buildings in the wings and centre, and leave in the interval of the contiguous parallel bodies a vacant space of from thirty to forty feet, at least, which would form elongated courts, traversed by corridors on columns, level with the first story, with closed glass windows, and heated or ventilated, according to the season. "The street-galleries of a Phalanx do not receive light from both sides, they form part of the body of the dwellings; each body has a double suite of chambers, of which one suite looks out on the fields, and the other into the gallery. The church on one side and the theatre on the other, complete the centre of Phalansterian unity.”* Supposing all the eighteen hundred Phalansterians to be Goodytwo-Shoes of the very first water; supposing concord vice discord; supposing contentment vice discontentment; supposing that every one is contented with the position in which the Phalanx has placed him; in fine, suppose human nature not human, but phalansterian nature, and the Phalanx practicable, and then no one can deny the immense temporal benefit that will accrue to the members of the harmonious corporation. The jolly sons of harmony Doubtless under these suppositions five kitchens are cheaper than four hundred. One vast store-room with its various compartments for every kind of produce, is undoubtedly an improvement on four hundred small barns, with a higgledy-piggledy conglomerate within its walls; of a truth, the Phalanx having got its estate, can choose the most suitable localities for various produce, or the most favour * We have placed this in italics, for the especial benefit of the Curate of Horbling able spots for its many buildings, which the small farmer cannot. And though the massing together of these four hundred families may reduce the demand for enclosures and barricades, for suits, title-deeds, and litigation, and destroy the trade of thieves, shutters, dogs, and ditches; what matters it to the Phalansterians how soon non-phalangian carpenters, lawyers, ditches and dogs disappear from this renovated world. You have no right to work either for yourself or by yourself, says M. Fourier: like a convict, you must work in a gang, and for the benefit of government. Nay, says our philosopher, but look at the increase of pleasure I offer you by this gang-working: remember, my industry is to be attractive. Industry is natural to man and animals-always excepting cats, we presume; it is monotony that makes it repulsive; ergo, change will make it attractive. Why does not the clerk enjoy the addition and subtraction of columns of figures? because he is at it all day, and also, we may add, because his pay is small. Why does not the seamstress enjoy shirt-making? because it lasts for ten mortal hours every day, says our philosopher: and also, say we, because she only gets one penny halfpenny per shirt, and, work herself to death, can not gain more than fourpence halfpenny a-day. Doubtless, pinsharpening, or cotton-piecing, or composing, or pleading, is very monotonous. Ergo, changey for changey, says Fourier; take an hour in the morning-we beg pardon, two hours is an harmonic spell at work--well, two hours after breakfast at turnip-hoeing; then take another harmonic spell at drawing pleas, or teaching French, or sticking on pins' heads, or painting, or teaching theology on the pantological system, or hedging, or ditching, or cooking, or all and each of these, one after the other, and then see how the work will be done. "Be all things by starts, and nothing long," and, like the Margites of Homer, you may by some lucky chance, know every thing, but nothing well. In two ways, in especial, the benefits of attractive industry are to be developed; the one is religion, the other domestic servitude. In harmony, we are assured the household service will be performed by groups and series; domestic corporations of men, women and children, will apply themselves to these duties spontaneously. How fearfully ignorant was our father's cook when she pinned the dishcloth to our jacket in return for the anxiety we displayed in watching the roasting of a leg of mutton: poor victim to false society, she little knew that she was endeavouring to stifle by derision the principle of attractive industry in our puerile heart. Good neighbours all, would you conceive such a paradise of a servants' hall, housekeeper's room, kitchen, butler's pantry, larder, and scullery as the following: "In harmony, domestic industry will be ennobled by the fact, that none are attached to an individual, that all are attached to the Phalanx. Domesticity, in this sense, is but a reciprocal exchange of services. The various cares of the interior attract intrinsically, when free from degradation; and this attraction is again enforced by the zeal and devotedness of domestic |