CHAPTER III.
THEORY OF NATIONAL EXPERIENCE.[ToC]
Now that our phenomena are fairly before us, a little speculation may be appropriate. One wants to know what position these experiments, which started so gaily and failed so soon, occupy in the history of this country and of the world; what relation they have to Christianity; what their meaning is in the great scheme of Providence. Students of Socialism and history must have some theory about their place and significance in the great whole of things. We have studied them somewhat in the circumspective way, and will devote a few pages to our theory about them. It will at least correct any impression that we intend to treat them disrespectfully.
And first we keep in mind a clear and wide distinction between the Associations and the movements from which they sprung. The word movement is very convenient, though very indefinite. We use it to designate the wide-spread excitements and discussions about Socialism which led to the experiments we have epitomized. In our last chapter we incidentally compared the socialistic movements of the Owen and Fourier epochs to religious revivals. We might now complete the idea, by comparing the Associations that issued from those movements, to churches that were organized in consequence of the revivals. A vast spiritual and intellectual excitement is one thing; and the institutions that rise out of it are another. We must not judge the excitement by the institutions.
We get but a very imperfect idea of the Owen and Fourier movements from the short-lived experiments whose remains are before us in Macdonald's collections. In the first place Macdonald, faithful as he was, did not discover all the experiments that were made during those movements. We remember some that are not named in his manuscripts. And in the next place the numbers engaged in the practical attempts were very small, in comparison with the masses that entered into the enthusiasm of the general movements and abandoned themselves to the idea of an impending social revolution. The eight thousand and six hundred that we found by averaging Macdonald's list, might probably be doubled to represent the census of the obscure unknown attempts, and then multiplied by ten to cover the outside multitudes that were converted to Socialism in the course of the Owen and Fourier revivals.
Owen in 1824 stirred the very life of the nation with his appeals to Kings and Congresses, and his vast experiments at New Harmony. Think of his family of nine hundred members on a farm of thirty thousand acres! A magnificent beginning, that thrilled the world! The general movement was proportionate to this beginning; and though this great Community and all the little ones that followed it failed and disappeared in a few years, the movement did not cease. Owen and his followers—especially his son Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright—continued to agitate the country with newspapers, public lectures, and "Fanny Wright societies," till their ideas actually got foot-hold and influence in the great Democratic party. The special enthusiasm for practical attempts at Association culminated in 1826, and afterwards subsided; but the excitement about Owen's ideas, which was really the Owen movement, reached its height after 1830; and the embers of it are in the heart of the nation to this day.
On the other hand, Fourier (by proxy) started another national excitement in 1842. With young Brisbane for its cosmopolitan apostle, and a national newspaper, such as the New York Tribune was, for its organ, this movement, like Owen's, could not be otherwise than national in its dimensions. We shall have occasion hereafter to show how vast and deep it was, and how poorly it is represented by the Phalanxes that figure in Macdonald's memoirs. Meanwhile let the reader consider that several of the men who were leaders in this excitement, were also leaders then and afterwards in the old Whig party; and he will have reason to conclude that Socialism, in its duplex form of Owenism and Fourierism, has touched and modified both of the party-sections and all departments of the national life.
We must not think of the two great socialistic revivals as altogether heterogeneous and separate. Their partizans maintained theoretical opposition to each other; but after all the main idea of both was the enlargement of home—the extension of family union beyond the little man-and-wife circle to large corporations. In this idea the two movements were one; and this was the charming idea that caught the attention and stirred the enthusiasm of the American people. Owenism prepared the way for Fourierism. The same men, or at least the same sort of men that took part in the Owen movement, were afterward carried away by the Fourier enthusiasm. The two movements may, therefore, be regarded as one; and in that view, the period of the great American socialistic revival extends from 1824, through the final and overwhelming excitement of 1843, to the collapse of Fourierism after 1846.
As a man who has passed through a series of passional excitements, is never the same being afterward, so we insist that these socialistic paroxysms have changed the heart of the nation; and that a yearning toward social reconstruction has become a part of the continuous, permanent, inner experience of the American people. The Communities and Phalanxes died almost as soon as they were born, and are now almost forgotten. But the spirit of Socialism remains in the life of the nation. It was discouraged and cast down by the failures of 1828 and 1846, and thus it learned salutary caution and self-control. But it lives still, as a hope watching for the morning, in thousands and perhaps millions who never took part in any of the experiments, and who are neither Owenites nor Fourierites, but simply Socialists without theory—believers in the possibility of a scientific and heavenly reconstruction of society.
Thus our theory harmonizes Owenism with Fourierism, and regards them both as working toward the same end in American history. Now we will go a step further and attempt the reconciling of still greater repugnances.
Since the war of 1812-15, the line of socialistic excitements lies parallel with the line of religious Revivals. Each had its two great leaders, and its two epochs of enthusiasm. Nettleton and Finney were to Revivals, what Owen and Fourier were to Socialism. Nettleton prepared the way for Finney, though he was opposed to him, as Owen prepared the way for Fourier. The enthusiasm in both movements had the same progression. Nettleton's agitation, like Owen's, was moderate and somewhat local. Finney, like Fourier, swept the nation as with a tempest. The Revival periods were a little in advance of those of Socialism. Nettleton commenced his labors in 1817, while Owen entered the field in 1824. Finney was at the height of his power in 1831-3, while Fourier was carrying all before him in 1842-3. Thus the movements were to a certain extent alternate. Opposed as they were to each other theologically—one being a movement of Bible men, and the other of infidels and liberals—they could not be expected to hold public attention simultaneously. But looking at the whole period from the end of the war in 1815 to the end of Fourierism after 1846, and allowing Revivals a little precedence over Socialism, we find the two lines of excitement parallel, and their phenomena wonderfully similar.
As we have shown that the socialistic movement was national, so, if it were necessary, we might here show that the Revival movement was national. There was a time between 1831 and 1834 when the American people came as near to a surrender of all to the Kingdom of Heaven, as they came in 1843 to a socialistic revolution. The Millennium seemed as near in 1831, as Fourier's Age of Harmony seemed in 1843. And the final effect of Revivals was a hope watching for the morning, which remains in the life of the nation, side by side, nay identical with, the great hope of Socialism.
And these movements—Revivalism and Socialism—opposed to each other as they may seem, and as they have been in the creeds of their partizans, are closely related in their essential nature and objects, and manifestly belong together in the scheme of Providence, as they do in the history of this nation. They are to each other as inner to outer—as soul to body—as life to its surroundings. The Revivalists had for their great idea the regeneration of the soul. The great idea of the Socialists was the regeneration of society, which is the soul's environment. These ideas belong together, and are the complements of each other. Neither can be successfully embodied by men whose minds are not wide enough to accept them both.
In fact these two ideas, which in modern times are so wide apart, were present together in original Christianity. When the Spirit of truth pricked three thousand men to the heart and converted them on the day of Pentecost, its next effect was to resolve them into one family and introduce Communism of property. Thus the greatest of all Revivals was also the great inauguration of Socialism.
Undoubtedly the Socialists will think we make too much of the Revival movement; and the Revivalists will think we make too much of the Socialistic movement; and the politicians will think we make too much of both, in assigning them important places in American history. But we hold that a man's deepest experiences are those of religion and love; and these are just the experiences in respect to which he is most apt to be ashamed, and most inclined to be silent. So the nation says but little, and tries to think that it thinks but little, about its Revivals and its Socialisms; but they are nevertheless the deepest and most interesting passages of its history, and worth more study as determinatives of character and destiny, than all its politics and diplomacies, its money matters and its wars.
Doubtless the Revivalists and Socialists despise each other, and perhaps both will despise us for imagining that they can be reconciled. But we will say what we believe; and that is, that they have both failed in their attempts to bring heaven on earth, because they despised each other, and would not put their two great ideas together. The Revivalists failed for want of regeneration of society, and the Socialists failed for want of regeneration of the heart.
On the one hand the Revivalists needed daily meetings and continuous criticism to save and perfect their converts; and these things they could not have without a thorough reconstruction of domestic life. They tried the expedient of "protracted meetings," which was really a half-way attack on the fashion of the world; but society was too strong for them, and their half-measures broke down, as all half-measures must. What they needed was to convert their churches into unitary families, and put them into unitary homes, where daily meetings and continuous criticism are possible;—and behold, this is Socialism!
On the other hand the Socialists, as often as they came together in actual attempts to realize their ideals, found that they were too selfish for close organization. The moan of Macdonald was, that after seeing the stern reality of the experiments, he lost hope, and was obliged to confess that he had "imagined mankind better than they are." This was the final confession of the leaders in the Associative experiments generally, from Owen to the last of the Fourierites; and this confession means, that Socialism needed for its complement, regeneration of the heart;—and behold, this is Revivalism!
These discords and failures of the past surely have not been in vain. Perhaps Providence has carried forward its regenerative designs in two lines thus far, for the sake of the advantage of a "division of labor." While the Bible men have worked for the regeneration of the soul, the infidels and liberals have been busy on the problem of the reconstruction of society. Working apart and in enmity, perhaps they have accomplished more for final harmony than they could have done together. Even their failures when rightly interpreted, may turn to good account. They have both helped to plant in the heart of the nation an unfailing hope of the "good time coming." Their lines of labor, though we have called them parallel, must really be convergent; and we may hope that the next phase of national history will be that of Revivalism and Socialism harmonized, and working together for the Kingdom of Heaven.
To complete our historical theory, we must mention in conclusion, one point of contrast between the Socialisms and the Revivals.
The Socialisms were imported from Europe; while the Revivals were American productions.
Owen was an Englishman, and Fourier was a Frenchman; but Nettleton and Finney were both Americans—both natives of Connecticut.
In the comparison we confine ourselves to the period since the war of 1812, because the history of the general socialistic excitements in this country is limited to that period. But the Revivals have an anterior history, extending back into the earliest times of New England. The great American system of Revivals, of which the Nettleton and Finney excitements were the continuation, was born in the first half of the last century, in central Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards, whose life extended from 1703 to 1758, was the father of it. So that not only since the war of 1812, but before the Revolution of 1776, we find Revivalism, as a system, strictly an American production.
We call the Owen and Fourier movements, American Socialisms, because they were national in their dimensions, and American life chiefly was the subject of them. But looking at what may be called the male element in the production of them, they were really European movements, propagated in this country. Nevertheless, if we take the view that Socialism and Revivalism are a unit in the design of Providence, one looking to the regeneration of externals and the other to the regeneration of internals, we may still call the entire movement American, as having Revivalism, which is American, for its inner life, though Socialism, the outer element, was imported from England and France.