"God sees in the human race only one family, all the members of which have a right to his favors. He designs that they shall all be happy together, or else no one people shall enjoy happiness. . . . The love of God will become in this new order the most ardent love among men."
The closing words of an exhaustive review of Fourier's writings, by Mr. John S. Dwight, in the Harbinger, are these:—"There is a Titanic strength in all the workings of that wonderful intellect. He walks as one who knows his ground. His step is firm, his eye is clear and unflinching, and he is acknowledged where he passes, for there is no littleness or weakness, no halting or duplicity, in his movement. He is in earnest; he has taken up his cross to fulfil a mighty mission. He doubts not, desponds not; he speaks always with certainty, and though he suffers from impatience of postponement, yet he ceases not to insist upon the truth. He expostulates, perhaps, with deceived and degraded humanity in too much bitterness of sarcasm; but how profound his reverence for Christ and for humanity, how pure his love for man, and how sublime his contemplation of the destiny of man in the scale of higher and higher beings up to God!"
Fourier passed from earth in 1837. His body was buried at Pere la
Chaise Cemetery, Paris, France.
The idea of living in combined families is no new thing. From the earliest times to the present, it has cropped out under various circumstances and with various changes. Ever with dawning of new light and the increase of universal education comes the desire—sometimes in great waves—for more united interests, and a truer, more Christian brotherhood; for closer unity in life and for the enlargement of home with all the joy, comfort and peace that word contains.
In this country various outgrowths from the social body have taken positions on this plane. The masses of our people are not now in sympathy with them. They believe that these little social homes or "communities" are dull and monotonous, and are bound so tightly by creeds as to be obnoxious to freedom of life and ideas. My belief is that the creeds adopted and thrown around them, though often adding to their financial protection, and possibly often being their only safeguards from fraud and knavery, have covered from the public the great dignity, worthiness and beauty of this mode of life; when, therefore, Mr. Ripley formed his society free from any pledges or creeds, it touched a deeper bottom in men's hearts than any like organization had ever sounded.
Whatever of failure there was in their actualization, Brook Farm ideas remain. They charm philosophers, poets and statesmen. They work quietly, leavening the social mass. One must be in sympathy with them to know how potent is their action and how with a touch of the old enthusiasm they will be found breaking out again in larger and larger circles of humanity, for in view of the progress of mechanism, science and art in the last fifty years, to form the phalanstery in its material shape would be an easy task.
Rev. William Henry Channing expressed himself in this wise to his mother, years after the breaking up of the Association:—
"My dearest mother, I assure you that did I see my way clear to an honorable independence for my family, so as to be just, while kind to them, I should joyfully die in attesting my fixed faith in Association, and I predict that when, years hence, we meet in the spiritual world, you will smilingly bless me and say, 'My son, your personal limitations excepted, you were right.' You will feel proud of my seeming earthly failures then; at least I humbly hope so. If this is all romance it is of that earnest, living strain which I trust ever more and more to be quickened by."
At a final visit to Brook Farm he said: "Most beautiful was that last day and all its memories; and never did I feel so calmly, humbly, devoutly thankful that it had been my privilege to fail in this grandest, sublimest, surest of all human movements. Were Thermopylae and Bunker Hill considered successes in their day and generation?"
Lying before me is a letter not intended for publication, showing how one member of the Association affectionately regarded his old home. It is as follows:—