FOVRIERISM, the social system invented by Charles Fourier, is contained in his published works, in a large connection of unpublished and in the writings of Considerant, Lechevallier, Brisbane, and ,others of his disciples. It differs materially from the systems of communism strictly so called, and all other social theories, and pro fosses to be based upon natural laws, and capable of being carried out on mathematical principles, as fixed and certain as those of geometry, music, or colors. The earth and human society, Fourier taught, are in their crude and infantile stage. The period of the race will be 80,000 years, the latter portion of which will be its declining phase, as the present is its ascending. The middle term will be a long period of maturity, prosperity, and happiness. What we call civilization, Fourier considers a false and imperfect con dition, with poverty, crime, ignorance, idleness, repugnant toil, disease, wasting wars, general antagonism, oppression, and misery. He believed that association would pro duce general riches, honesty, attractive and varied industry,, health, peace, and universal happiness. Considering attractions and repulsions the governing forces of all nature, and that God has distributed them for the happiness of all his creatures, he held that "attractions are proportional to destinies," or that the desires or passions of men, their aptitudes and inclinations, if they could have free scope, would infallibly produce the highest condition and greatest happiness of which they are capable. He believed in a pniversal harmony, flowing from and centering in God, the author of all harmonies, and that there is therefore a principle of " universal analogy." Seeing. that all things, from suns and planets to atoms, range themselves in groups and series, according to certain fixed laws of attraction and repulsion, he labored to discover the kind of human society that must eventually form itself in obedience to those laws. This is the association or phalanstery, which is to consist of 400 families or 1800 persons, which number he found included the whole circle of human capacities. These should live in one immense edi fice, in the center of a large and highly cultivated domain, and furnished with work shops, studios, and all the appliances of industry and art, as well as all the sources of amusement and pleasure. When the earth is covered with palaces of attractive industry, the associations will also unite in groups and series, under a unitary government. 'There will be but one language and one government, and the only armies will be the great industrial armies, which will drain swamps, irrigate deserts, plant forests, and effect the amelioration of climates. The system of Fourier does not propose to destroy, hut rather to conserve property, position, and hereditary rights, nor does it war directly with morals or religion. The property of the association is to be held in shares, and
the whole product of the industrial and artistic groups is to be divided into 12 parts, of which 5 parts are due to labor, 4 to capital, and 3 to talent. The apartments are to be of various prices, and the styles of living to vary in luxury and cost; but the poorest person in the association is not only to be secure of comfort, but his minimum of enjoy ments will be greater than the present social arrangements can give to princes and millionaires; while these will have opened to them pleasures of which they can now scarcely have a conception. The economics of the large scale in the phalanstery reduce by two thirds the expenses of living, while an attractive and scientific industry would quadruple the products of civilization.
The passions of the human soul to which the system of Fourier would give full scope, he described as the five sensitive—sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch; four affective —friendship, love, ambition, and paternity; three distributive—the emulative, alter' M ing, and composite. Inveliese he found the springs of industry and true society. Emula tion, the desire of success, honors, rewards, is the great stimulant to exertion; alterna tion of employments makes work a recreation; and the composite passion requires combinations of charm and enjoyment which only association can give. Many attempts have been made—a few in France, and more in America—to carry the ideas of Fourier into practical realization; but they have all been on a small scale, and with inadequate means, and have resulted in failure. Whatever we may think of the system, in its principles or its theoretical development, nothing can be founded upon the failure of such experiments. It remains to be proved whether human nature, in its present state, is capable of carrying out successfully asocial system so widely varying from all existing social conditions. The moral objections to F. are, that it appears to make luxury, ambition, and sensual delights the end of existence—the incentives and rewards to dli exertions; and that the passions of men, when left in the perfect freedom which this syste,in requires, would lead to ruinous demoralizations. The answer is, that "attrac tions are proportional to destinies," and that these excesses belong to the present state, and are incident to the poverty and repressions of civilization, but could not exist in a true society; which raises the question—What is a true society? Whatever maybe thought of the practicability of the system, its study in the works of Fourier is full of su.r,,estions to the student in sociology.