CHAPTER XI.
CHANNING'S BROOK FARM.[ToC]
We are now on the confines of the Fourier movement. The time-focus changes from 1826 to 1843. As the period of our history thus approaches the present time, our resources become more ample and authentic. Henceforward we shall not confine ourselves so closely to Macdonald's materials as we have done. The printed literature of Fourierism is more abundant than that of Owenism; and while we shall still follow the catalogue of Associations which we gave from Macdonald in our third chapter, and shall appropriate all that is interesting in his memoirs, we shall also avail ourselves freely of various publications of the Fourierists themselves. A full set of their leading periodicals, (probably the only one in existence) was thrust upon us by the freak of a half-crazed literary gentleman, nearly at the very time when we had the good fortune to find Macdonald's collections. We shall hereafter refer most frequently to the files of The Dial, The Present, The Phalanx, The Harbinger, and The Tribune.
In order to understand the Fourier movement, we must look at the preparations for it. This we have already been doing, in studying Owenism. But there were other preparations. Owenism was the socialistic prelude. We must now attend to what may be called the religious preparations.
Owenism was limited and local, chiefly because it was thoroughly non-religious and even anti-religious. In order that Fourierism might sweep the nation, it was necessary that it should ally itself to some form of popular religion, and especially that it should penetrate the strongholds of religious New England.
To prepare for this combination, a differentiation in the New England church was going on simultaneously with the career of Owenism. After the war of 1815, the division of Congregationalism into Orthodoxy and Unitarianism, commenced. Excluding from our minds the doctrinal and ecclesiastical quarrels that attended this division, it is easy to see that Providence, which is always on both sides of every fight, aimed at division of labor in this movement. One party was set to defend religion; the other liberty. One stood by the old faith, like the Jew; the other went off into free-thinking and the fine arts, like the Greek. One worked on regeneration of the heart; the other on culture of the external life. In short, one had for its function the carrying through of the Revival system; the other the development of Socialism.
The royal men of these two "houses of Israel" were Dr. Beecher and Dr. Channing; and both left royal families, direct or collateral. The Beechers are leading the Orthodox to this day; and the Channings, the Unitarians. We all know what Dr. Beecher and his children have done for revivals. He was the pivotal man between Nettleton and Finney in the last generation, and his children are the standard-bearers of revival religion in the present. What the Channings have done for Socialism is not so well known, and this is what we must now bring to view.
First and chief of all the experiments of the Fourier epoch was Brook Farm. And yet Brook Farm in its original conception, was not a Fourier formation at all, but an American seedling. It was the child of New England Unitarianism. Dr. Channing himself was the suggester of it. So says Ralph Waldo Emerson. As this is an interesting point of history, we have culled from a newspaper report of Mr. Emerson's lecture on Brook Farm, the following summary, from which it appears that Dr. Channing was the pivotal man between old-fashioned Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, and the father of The Dial and of Brook Farm:
EMERSON'S REMINISCENCES OF BROOK FARM.
"In the year 1840 Dr. Channing took counsel with Mr. George Ripley on the point if it were possible to bring cultivated, thoughtful people together, and make a society that deserved the name. He early talked with Dr. John Collins Warren on the same thing, who admitted the wisdom of the purpose, and undertook to make the experiment. Dr. Channing repaired to his house with these thoughts; he found a well chosen assembly of gentlemen; mutual greetings and introductions and chattings all around, and he was in the way of introducing the general purpose of the conversation, when a side-door opened, the whole company streamed in to an oyster supper with good wines, and so ended that attempt in Boston. Channing opened his mind then to Ripley, and invited a large party of ladies and gentlemen. I had the honor to be present. No important consequences of the attempt followed. Margaret Fuller, Ripley, Bronson and Hedge, and many others, gradually came together, but only in the way of students. But I think there prevailed at that time a general belief in the city that this was some concert of doctrinaires to establish certain opinions, or to inaugurate some movement in literature, philosophy, or religion, but of which these conspirators were quite innocent. It was no concert, but only two or three men and women, who read alone with some vivacity. Perhaps all of them were surprised at the rumor that they were a school or sect, but more especially at the name of 'Transcendentalism.' Nobody knows who first applied the name. These persons became in the common chance of society acquainted with each other, and the result was a strong friendship, exclusive in proportion to its heat. * * *
"From that time, meetings were held with conversation—with very little form—from house to house. Yet the intelligent character and varied ability of the company gave it some notoriety, and perhaps awakened some curiosity as to its aims and results. But nothing more serious came of it for a long time. A modest quarterly journal called The Dial, under the editorship of Margaret Fuller, enjoyed its obscurity for four years, when it ended. Its papers were the contributions and work of friendship among a narrow circle of writers. Perhaps its writers were also its chief readers. But it had some noble papers; perhaps the best of Margaret Fuller's. It had some numbers highly important, because they contained papers by Theodore Parker. * *
"I said the only result of the conversations which Dr. Channing had was to initiate the little quarterly called The Dial; but they had a further consequence in the creation of the society called the "Brook Farm" in 1841. Many of these persons who had compared their notes around in the libraries of each other upon speculative matters, became impatient of speculation, and wished to put it into practice. Mr. George Ripley, with some of his associates, established a society, of which the principle was, that the members should be stockholders, and that while some deposited money others should be allowed to give their labor in different kinds as an equivalent for money. It contained very many interesting and agreeable persons. Mr. Curtis of New York, and his brother of English Oxford, were members of the family; from the first also was Theodore Parker; Mr. Morton of Plymouth—engaged in the fisheries—eccentric; he built a house upon the farm, and he and his family continued in it till the end; Margaret Fuller, with her joyous conversations and sympathies. Many persons gave character and attractiveness to the place. The farm consisted of 200 acres, and occupied some spot near Reedville camp of later years. In and around it, whether as members, boarders, or visitors, were remarkable persons for character, intellect and accomplishments. * * * The Rev. Wm. H. Channing, now of London, student of Socialism in France and England, was a frequent sojourner here, and in perfect sympathy with the experiment. * * *
"Brook Farm existed six or seven years, when the society broke up and the farm was sold, and all parties came out with a loss; some had spent on it the accumulations of years. At the moment all regarded it as a failure; but I do not think that all so regard it now, but probably as an important chapter in their experience, which has been of life-long value. What knowledge has it not afforded them! What personal power which the studies of character have given: what accumulated culture many members owe to it; what mutual pleasure they took of each other! A close union like that in a ship's cabin, of persons in various conditions; clergymen, young collegians, merchants, mechanics, farmers' sons and daughters, with men of rare opportunities and culture."
Mr. Emerson's lecture is doubtless reliable on the main point for which we quote from it—the Unitarian and Channing-arian origin of Brook Farm—but certainly superficial in its view of the substantial character and final purpose of that Community. Brook Farm, though American and Unitarian in its origin, became afterward the chief representative and propagative organ of Fourierism, as we shall ultimately show. The very blossom of the experiment, by which it seeded the nation and perpetuated its species, was its periodical, The Harbinger, and this belonged entirely to the Fourieristic period of its career. Emerson dilates on The Dial, but does not allude to The Harbinger. In thus ignoring the public function by which Brook Farm was signally related to the great socialistic revival of 1843, and to the whole of American Socialism, Emerson misses what we conceive to be the main significance of the experiment, and indeed of Unitarianism itself.
And here we may say, in passing, that this brilliant Community has a right to complain that its story should have to be told by aliens. Emerson, who was not a member of it, nor in sympathy with the socialistic movement to which it abandoned itself, has volunteered a lecture of reminiscences; and Hawthorne, who joined it only to jilt it, has given the world a poetico-sneering romance about it; and that is all the first-hand information we have, except what can be gleaned from obsolete periodicals. George William Curtis, though he was a member, coolly exclaims in Harper's Magazine:
"Strangely enough, Hawthorne is likely to be the chief future authority upon 'the romantic episode' of Brook Farm. Those who had it at heart more than he, whose faith and energy were all devoted to its development, and many of whom have every ability to make a permanent record, have never done so, and it is already so much a thing of the past, that it will probably never be done."
In the name of history we ask, Why has not George William Curtis himself made the permanent record? Why has not George Ripley taken the story out of the mouths of the sneerers? Brook Farm might tell its own story through him, for he was Brook Farm. It was George Ripley who took into his heart the inspiration of Dr. Channing, and went to work like a hero to make a fact of it; while Emerson stood by smiling incredulity. It was Ripley who put on his frock and carted manure, and set Hawthorne shoveling, and did his best for years to keep work going, that the Community might pay as well as play. It was no "picnic" or "romantic episode" or chance meeting "in a ship's cabin" to him. His whole soul was bent on making a home of it. If a man's first-born, in whom his heart is bound up, dies at six years old, that does not turn the whole affair into a joke. There were others of the same spirit, but Ripley was the center of them.
Brook Farm came very near being a religious Community. It inherited the spirit of Dr. Channing and of Transcendentalism. The inspiration in the midst of which it was born, was intensely literary, but also religious. The Brook Farmers refer to it as the "revival," the "newness," the "renaissance." There was evidently an afflatus on the men, and they wrote and acted as they were moved. The Dial was the original organ of this afflatus, and contains many articles that are edifying to Christians of good digestion. It was published quarterly, and the four volumes of it (sixteen numbers) extended from July 1840 to April 1844.
The first notice we find of Brook Farm is in connection with an article in the second volume of The Dial (Oct. 1841), entitled, "A Glimpse of Christ's Idea of Society." The writer of this most devout essay was Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, then and since a distinguished literary lady. She was evidently in full sympathy with the "newness" out of which Brook Farm issued. Margaret Fuller, one of the constituents of Brook Farm, was editress of The Dial, and thus sanctioned the essay. Its reference to Brook Farm is avowed in a note at the end, and in a subsequent article. The following extracts give us
THE ORIGINAL IDEAL OF BROOK FARM.
[From The Dial, Oct. 1841.]
"While we acknowledge the natural growth, the good design, and the noble effects of the apostolic church, and wish we had it, in place of our own more formal ones, we should not do so small justice to the divine soul of Jesus of Nazareth, as to admit that it was a main purpose of his to found it, or that when it was founded it realized his idea of human society. Indeed we probably do injustice to the apostles themselves, in supposing that they considered their churches anything more than initiatory. Their language implies that they looked forward to a time when the uttermost parts of the earth should be inherited by their beloved master; and beyond this, when even the name, which is still above every name, should be lost in the glory of the Father, who is to be all in all.
"Some persons, indeed, refer all this sort of language to another world; but this is gratuitously done. Both Jesus and the apostles speak of life as the same in both worlds. For themselves individually they could not but speak principally of another world; but they imply no more than that death is an accident, which would not prevent, but hasten the enjoyment of that divine life, which they were laboring to make possible to all men, in time as well as in eternity. * * *
"The Kingdom of Heaven, as it lay in the clear spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, is rising again upon vision. Nay, this Kingdom begins to be seen not only in religious ecstasy, in moral vision, but in the light of common sense, and the human understanding. Social science begins to verify the prophecy of poetry. The time has come when men ask themselves what Jesus meant when he said, 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto the least of these little ones, ye have not done it unto me.'
"No sooner is it surmised that the Kingdom of Heaven and the Christian Church are the same thing, and that this thing is not an association outside of society, but a reörganization of society itself, on those very principles of love to God and love to man, which Jesus Christ realized in his own daily life, than we perceive the day of judgment for society is come, and all the words of Christ are so many trumpets of doom. For before the judgment-seat of his sayings, how do our governments, our trades, our etiquettes, even our benevolent institutions and churches look? What church in Christendom, that numbers among its members a pauper or a negro, may stand the thunder of that one word, 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it to the least of these little ones, ye have not done it unto me?' And yet the church of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven, has not come upon earth, according to our daily prayer, unless not only every church, but every trade, every form of social intercourse, every institution political or other, can abide this test. * * *
"One would think from the tone of conservatives, that Jesus accepted the society around him, as an adequate framework for individual development into beauty and life, instead of calling his disciples 'out of the world.' We maintain, on the other hand, that Christ desired to reörganize society, and went to a depth of principle and a magnificence of plan for this end, which has never been appreciated, except here and there, by an individual, still less been carried out. * * *
"There are men and women, who have dared to say to one another, Why not have our daily life organized on Christ's own idea? Why not begin to move the mountain of custom and convention? Perhaps Jesus's method of thought and life is the Savior—is Christianity! For each man to think and live on this method is perhaps the Second Coming of Christ. To do unto the little ones as we would do unto him, would be perhaps the reign of the Saints—the Kingdom of Heaven. We have hitherto heard of Christ by the hearing of the ear; now let us see him, let us be him, and see what will come of that. Let us communicate with each other and live. * * *
"There have been some plans and experiments of Community attempted in this country, which, like those elsewhere, are interesting chiefly as indicating paths in which we should not go. Some have failed because their philosophy of human nature was inadequate, and their establishments did not regard man as he is, with all the elements of devil and angel within his actual constitution. Brisbane has made a plan worthy of study in some of its features, but erring in the same manner. He does not go down into a sufficient spiritual depth, to lay foundations which may support his superstructure. Our imagination before we reflect, no less than our reason after reflection, rebels against this attempt to circumvent moral freedom, and imprison it in his Phalanx. * *
"The church of Christ's Idea, world-embracing, can be founded on nothing short of faith in the universal man, as he comes out of the hands of the Creator, with no law over his liberty, but the Eternal Ideas that lie at the foundation of his Being. Are you a man? This is the only question that is to be asked of a member of human society. And the enounced laws of that society should be an elastic medium of these Ideas; providing for their everlasting unfolding into new forms of influence, so that the man of time should be the growth of eternity, consciously and manifestly.
"To form such a society as this is a great problem, whose perfect solution will take all the ages of time; but let the Spirit of God move freely over the great deep of social existence, and a creative light will come at his word; and after that long evening in which we are living, the morning of the first day shall dawn on a Christian society. * * *
"N.B. A Postscript to this Essay, giving an account of a specific attempt to realize its principles, will appear in the next number."
Thus, according to this writer, Brook Farm, in its inception, was an effort to establish the kingdom of God on earth; that kingdom in which "the will of God shall be done as it is done in heaven;" a higher state than that of the apostolic church; worthy even to be called the Second Coming of Christ, and the beginning of the day of judgment! A high religious aim, surely! and much like that proposed by the Shakers and other successful Communities, that have the reputation of being fanatical.
The reader will notice that Miss Peabody, on behalf of Brook Farm, disclaims Fourierism, which was then just beginning to be heard of through Brisbane's Social Destiny of Man, first published in 1840.
In the next number of The Dial Miss Peabody fulfills her promise of information about Brook Farm, in an article entitled, "Plan of the West Roxbury Community." Some extracts will give an idea of the first tottering steps of the infant enterprise:
THE ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF BROOK FARM.
[From The Dial, Jan. 1842.]
"In the last number of The Dial, were some remarks, under the perhaps ambitious title of, 'A Glimpse of Christ's Idea of Society;' in a note to which it was intimated, that in this number would be given an account of an attempt to realize in some degree this great Ideal, by a little company in the midst of us, as yet without name or visible existence. The attempt is made on a very small scale. A few individuals, who, unknown to each other, under different disciplines of life, reacting from different social evils, but aiming at the same object,—of being wholly true to their natures as men and women—have been made acquainted with one another, and have determined to become the Faculty of the Embryo University.
"In order to live a religious and moral life worthy the name, they feel it is necessary to come out in some degree from the world, and to form themselves into a community of property, so far as to exclude competition and the ordinary rules of trade; while they reserve sufficient private property, or the means of obtaining it, for all purposes of independence, and isolation at will. They have bought a farm, in order to make agriculture the basis of their life, it being the most direct and simple in relation to nature. A true life, although it aims beyond the highest star, is redolent of the healthy earth. The perfume of clover lingers about it. The lowing of cattle is the natural bass to the melody of human voices. [Here we have the old farming hobby of the socialists.] * * *
"The plan of the Community, as an economy, is in brief this: for all who have property to take stock, and receive a fixed interest thereon: then to keep house or board in commons, as they shall severally desire, at the cost of provisions purchased at wholesale, or raised on the farm; and for all to labor in community, and be paid at a certain rate an hour, choosing their own number of hours, and their own kind of work. With the results of this labor and their interest, they are to pay their board, and also purchase whatever else they require at cost, at the warehouses of the Community, which are to be filled by the Community as such. To perfect this economy, in the course of time they must have all trades and all modes of business carried on among themselves, from the lowest mechanical trade, which contributes to the health and comfort of life, to the finest art, which adorns it with food or drapery for the mind.
"All labor, whether bodily or intellectual, is to be paid at the same rate of wages; on the principle that as the labor becomes merely bodily, it is a greater sacrifice to the individual laborer to give his time to it; because time is desirable for the cultivation of the intellectual, in exact proportion to ignorance. Besides, intellectual labor involves in itself higher pleasures, and is more its own reward, than bodily labor. * * *
"After becoming members of this Community, none will be engaged merely in bodily labor. The hours of labor for the Association will be limited by a general law, and can be curtailed at the will of the individual still more; and means will be given to all for intellectual improvement and for social intercourse, calculated to refine and expand. The hours redeemed from labor by community, will not be re-applied to the acquisition of wealth, but to the production of intellectual goods. This Community aims to be rich, not in the metallic representative of wealth, but in the wealth itself, which money should represent; namely, LEISURE TO LIVE IN ALL THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. As a Community, it will traffic with the world at large, in the products of agricultural labor; and it will sell education to as many young persons as can be domesticated in the families, and enter into the common life with their own children. In the end it hopes to be enabled to provide, not only all the necessaries, but all the elegances desirable for bodily and for spiritual health: books, apparatus, collections for science, works of art, means of beautiful amusement. These things are to be common to all; and thus that object, which alone gilds and refines the passion for individual accumulation, will no longer exist for desire, and whenever the sordid passion appears, it will be seen in its naked selfishness. In its ultimate success, the Community will realize all the ends which selfishness seeks, but involved in spiritual blessings, which only greatness of soul can aspire after.
"And the requisitions on the individuals, it is believed, will make this the order forever. The spiritual good will always be the condition of the temporal. Every one must labor for the Community in a reasonable degree, or not taste its benefits. * * * Whoever is willing to receive from his fellow men that for which he gives no equivalent, will stay away from its precincts forever. But whoever shall surrender himself to its principles, shall find that its yoke is easy and its burden light. Everything can be said of it, in a degree, which Christ said of his kingdom, and therefore it is believed that in some measure it does embody his idea. For its gate of entrance is strait and narrow. It is literally a pearl hidden in a field. Those only who are willing to lose their life for its sake shall find it. Its voice is that which sent the young man sorrowing away: 'Go sell all thy goods and give to the poor, and then come and follow me.' 'Seek first the kingdom of Heaven and its righteousness, and all other things shall be added to you.' * * *
"There may be some persons at a distance, who will ask, To what degree has this Community gone into operation? We can not answer this with precision, but we have a right to say that it has purchased the farm which some of its members cultivated for a year with success, by way of trying their love and skill for agricultural labor; that in the only house they are as yet rich enough to own, is collected a large family, including several boarding scholars, and that all work and study together. They seem to be glad to know of all who desire to join them in the spirit, that at any moment, when they are able to enlarge their habitations, they may call together those that belong to them."
Thus far it is evident that Brook Farm was not a Fourier formation. Whether the beginnings of the excitement about Fourierism may not have secretly affected Dr. Channing and the Transcendentalists, we can not say. Brisbane's first publication and Dr. Channing's first suggestion of a Community (according to Emerson) took place in the same year—1840. But Brook Farm, as reported by Miss Peabody, up to January 1842 had nothing to do with Fourierism, but was an original Yankee attempt to embody Christianity as understood by Unitarians and Transcendentalists; having a constitution (written or unwritten) invented perhaps by Ripley, or suggested by the collective wisdom of the associates. Without any great scientific theory, it started as other Yankee experiments have done, with the purpose of feeling its way toward co-operation, by the light of experience and common sense; beginning cautiously, as was proper, with the general plan of joint-stock; but calling itself a Community, and evidently bewitched with the idea which is the essential charm of all Socialisms, that it is possible to combine many families into one great home. Moreover thus far there was no "advertising for a wife," no gathering by public proclamation. The two conditions of success which we named as primary in a previous chapter, viz., religious principle and previous acquaintance, were apparently secured. The nucleus was small in number, and well knit together by mutual acquaintance and spiritual sympathy. In all this, Brook Farm was the opposite of New Harmony.
If we take Rev. William H. Channing, nephew and successor of Dr. Channing, as the exponent of Brook Farm—which we may safely do, since Emerson says he was "a frequent sojourner there, and in perfect sympathy with the experiment"—we have evidence that the Community had not fallen into the ranks of Fourierism at a considerably later period. On the 15th of September 1843, Mr. Channing commenced publishing in New York a monthly Magazine called The Present, the main object of which was nearly the same as that of The Dial, viz., the discussion of religious Socialism, as understood at Brook Farm and among the Transcendentalists; and in his third number (Nov. 15) he used language concerning Fourier, which The Phalanx, Brisbane's organ (then also just commencing), criticised as disrespectful and painfully offensive.
From this indication, slight as it is, we may safely conclude that the amalgamation of Brook Farm and Fourierism had not taken place up to November 1843, which was more than two years after Miss Peabody's announcement of the birth of the Community. So far Brook Farm was American and religious, and stood related to the Fourier revival only as a preparation. So far it was Channing's Brook Farm. Its story after it became Fourier's Brook Farm will be reserved for the end of our history of Fourierism.