FOURIERISM. The system of Francois Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837). Fourier was the son of a draper, and it was some distasteful experiences in con nection with business that excited his indignation against the conditions of trade and commerce. He was punished, when only five years old, for telling one of his father's customers the truth about some goods, and in 1799 as a clerk in Marseilles he had to superintend the casting into the sea of a great quantity of rice which had been held back at a time of scarcity in the hope of increasing the price and had become unfit for use. Fourier determined to try to discover a remedy for such a corrupt and immoral state of things. "He soon per ceived that the only mode of ensuring truth, equity, and economy, either in productive or distributive Industry, was to suppress the rivalry of interest between the pro ducer and the consumer, by associating them together in a common union. The numerous advantages of other kinds capable of being realized by association if it were extended so as to embrace the domestic life of men as well as the operations of industry, convinced him that God must have ordained such an association as the natural destiny of man, and that the condition under which it could be formed would be discoverable by a careful study of the laws by which the nature of man was governed. The unity which he observed in all the works of God led him to the conviction that, the Creator being an infinite harmonious being, everything in nature must be an imitation of His attributes, and therefore that there exists in every order of creation similarity or universal analogy. The study of the universe around him led him further to the persuasion that all its har monies are distributed in progressive series; and that every being in creation is subject to permanent attract ions and repulsions In proportion to its respective funct ions and final destinies. Armed with these principles, he set himself to study first the natural impulses, attract ions and repulsions of man, and then the mode in which these faculties could be combined progressively according to the general laws of series, satisfied that he should thus be led to the discovery of the principle of union of which he was in quest " (E. V. Neale). Fourier investigated
the nature of man, and found in him three classes of inborn desires. The first class consists of the five senses. The second class comprises the four modes of affection : friendship, love, parental and filial, ambition or corporate affection. The third class embraces three intellectual desires : the desire of intrigue and rivalry; the desire of alternation; and the desire of combining different pleasures. How are these passions and desires to be satisfied duly? The five senses require physical health and vigour, as well as material wealth. The four moral affections require free scope for the development of groups of persons drawn together by similarity of tastes, etc. The three intellectual desires require free play for a spirit of rivalry and emulation. Fourier therefore combined men into social individuals called phalanges, who should dwell each in the phalanstere best suited to his taste, " cultivating each a sufficient quantity of land for the support of all the members of which it is com posed, and carrying on, in combination with the agricul tural operations forming the basis of its existence, such other industrial pursuits as the nature of the locality or climate suggested. The secret of securing the well-being of such a body, and of all the members composing it, consisted in such arrangements as would allow the groups into which its members would be drawn by their mutual attractions, to form themselves into a series methodically arranged, so that each group should be in direct rivalry with those immediately contiguous to it, and passing gradually lit]to concord with those more removed from it, and as would at the same time link all the series thus formed to each other by a gradual transition " (Neale). See Edward Vansittart Neale, The Charac teristic Features of some of the Principal Systems of Socialism, 1851; Chambers' Encycl.; cp. Guiseppe Maz zini, Thoughts upon Democracy in Europe, 1847.