The dwelling-place of a phalange will be called a phalanstère—an edifice commodious and elegant, wherein, while the convenient distribution of the interior will be first considered, the claims of architecture will not be forgotten. It will be a vast structure of the most beautiful symmetry, testifying by its magnificence to the splendour of the new life of which it is to be the scene. Galleries, baths, a theatre, every thing conducive to a pleasurable existence, will be found in it. A strict equality of wealth is no part of the scheme of our socialist; but every one will have a sufficiency, and will obtain apartments and provisions in the phalanstère suitable to his fortune. M. Fourier further guarantees, that there shall be no vanity amongst the rich, and no mortification felt by the poorer brethren of the establishment.
As to the expense of this phalanstère, M. Fourier undertakes to construct it for what the building of four hundred miserable cottages would cost, which would not accommodate a much greater number of individuals, and which would fall to pieces after a few years. And as to housekeeping, would not one enormous kitchen replace to advantage four hundred small and ill-appointed kitchens? one vast cellar four hundred little cellars? one gigantic washhouse four hundred damp, wretched outhouses, not worthy of the name? Add to which, that much may be done in these gigantic kitchens and washhouses by the judicious introduction of a steam-engine, which might also be employed in supplying all the apartments with water.
Labour, proceeding with such facility, such ardour, such enthusiasm, as it will do in the phalanstère, must bring in enormous profits—quadruple, as M. Fourier thinks, of what our present ineffective means produce. It is in the division of these profits that our socialist has been thought particularly happy; here it is that he introduces his famous formula, "to associate men in capital, labour, and talent," (associer les hommes en capital, travail, et talent.) The whole profits of the community are first to be divided into three portions; one for capital, one for labour, and one for talent—say four-twelfths for capital, five-twelfths for labour, and three-twelfths for talent. The portion allotted to the capitalists can create no difficulty—it will be divided amongst them in proportion to the amount of capital they severally supply. But a difficulty presents itself in the distribution of the other two portions. Are all species of labour, and all descriptions of talent, to be equally remunerated, or by what rule shall their several rewards be determined? M. Fourier declares that the labours necessary to the community shall be most highly recompensed; then those that are useful; and last of all, those which administer, as the fine arts, only to pleasure and amusement. For this determination he gives a sound reason, but one which we ought not to have heard from the centre of a phalanstère; it is, that necessary labours are nearly all of a repugnant nature, and should therefore be most amply rewarded.
To determine the degree of talent the individual has displayed, the principle of election is called in. There is, however, a high order of talent which is considered quite apart. Great artists, great mechanicians, great writers—these belong to no phalange, but to humanity. The world will charge itself with their remuneration. They will be relieved from the usual condition of labour; and when, after a long repose, they have produced a work, (how it comes to be known what bird will lay the golden egg till the egg is laid, we are not told,) then will a jury, assembled at the metropolis of the world, which will be built on the site of Constantinople, vote them a recompense. "Imagine, for example, Jacquart or Watt, Newton or Corneille, presenting themselves before this august tribunal—Jacquart with his loom, Watt with his steam-engine, Newton with his theory of attractions, Corneille with his most beautiful tragedy. At the instant, to the exclusion of all delays and hazards of fame, there would be voted to these great men a remuneration, to be levied on all the phalanges. Suppose only five francs on each phalange, and that there were five hundred thousand phalanges on the globe, the jury would have accorded a sum of 2,500,000 francs; Jacquart would not have been compelled to die in a state bordering on indigence, after having enriched the universe."
Fournier was in person short, thin, and pale, but his melancholy and pensive physiognomy bore traces of his long, unquiet, and ungrateful labours. A simple clerk, he did not venture, when he published his writings, to sign them with any other name than that of Charles, declaring himself ready, under that name, to answer any objections that might be addressed to him. Alas! there were few objections addressed to him; Charles got no readers; men pitied or ridiculed him as a visionary. Repulsed by the surrounding world, there remained nothing for him but to live in that creation of his own, in which, at all events, he reigned supreme. In his reveries he found his only happiness. He walked glorious in the midst of joyful enthusiastic multitudes, who saluted him as their benefactor, and proclaimed him as their sovereign; he spoke to these beings, the children of his dreams, in a language which he alone comprehended; he built his phalanstère, peopled, organized it; conducted himself the labours of his harmonic groups, founded his towns, his capitals, nay, his capital of the world, which he erected on the Bosphorus, uniting the east and west, the north and south. There he placed with his own hand the laurel, decreed by his million of phalanges, on the brow of the greatest philosopher of his age. "These festivals of the imagination," says M. Reybaud, "were the only pleasures that relived the long, and gloomy, and proud poverty of Fourier."
One trait we cannot pass over, as it seems, so to speak, to have a psychological value. Such was his habit of ordering and arranging all things, that Charles not only undertook to regulate the affairs of men, and redress the inequalities of their several destinies, but he took into his consideration the inequalities of the several climates of the earth, and very seriously occupied himself with redressing their anomalies. To him, as he walked the streets of Paris, the severe cold of the North Pole was disquieting, and a subject of uneasiness; it was part of his mission to temper and subdue it, and tame it for the habitation of men. Perhaps the heat from those gigantic kitchens in his phalanstères might help him in his task. At all events, this and other gross atmospheric irregularities were not be endured in the world which he was planning.
There are two things, M. Reybaud remarks, especially reprehensible in the theory of Fourier and of kindred socialists—First, the confounding happiness with enjoyment, and the legitimating of all our passions; and Secondly, the egregious expectation of moulding mankind by an external or social organization, without calling in aid the virtues of the individual. The one necessarily follows on the other. The chain of error is manifest, and leads, as a chain of error may be expected to do, to inextricable confusion. If mere enjoyment, if the gratification of our senses and passions, be the highest aim and condition of the human being, it follows that all moral discipline, all self-denial, must be regarded as so much defect, so much imperfection, so much manifest failure in the world-scheme. That lofty gratification which men have been accustomed to attribute to self-control, to abstinence practised under a sense of duty, or in the cause of justice, this is to be measured off as so much simple misery, or so much negation of enjoyment. Let all restraint be discarded: let man be free; but yet, as the good of the whole is to be consulted in all societies, and in the new society is consulted in an eminent degree, the individual thus released from all self-control must be ruled despotically, or, if you will, moulded, fashioned, mechanized by the laws of the community; for we suppose it will be admitted, whatever M. Fourier tells us of his discovered law of attraction, that a very stringent legislation must bind together that harmonic society, which begins by giving loose rein to all the passions of mankind. How the two are to be practically reconciled—how the utmost license of the individual is to be combined with the utmost and most minute supervision of the laws, we leave the socialist to determine. Such is the miserable tissue of error and confusion which these projects present to view.
These socialists are fond of inventing new Christianities, and in some salons in Paris it is, or was till very lately, the fashion to have a new Christianity propounded every full moon. New enough! They present at least a sufficient contrast with the old Christianity, and in no other point more than in this—the complete dependence for the formation of the character of individuals on the art of grouping and regimenting them. Christianity has supported for ages monastic institutions, institutions the most counter to the passions of men, solely by its strong appeal to the individual conscience. St Simonian institutions, or delightful phalanstères, will in vain flatter every passion and indulge every sense; if they leave the conscience inert, if nothing is built on the sense of duty, they will no sooner rise but they will crumble back again into dust.
But we do not touch upon these fundamental errors of the socialists, with the superfluous view of showing the impossibility of realizing their schemes; we note them because their recognition demonstrates at once the ill influence which must attend on the teaching and constant agitation of such schemes. On the one hand, all our desires authorized, and self-control put out of countenance as a mere marplot; on the other hand, perpetual representations that a government or social organization could effect every thing, or almost every thing that can be desired for the happiness of man. What must follow but that men learn to indulge themselves in a very lax morality, and to make most extravagant demands on the government, or the legislative force of society? Their notions of right and wrong, and their ideas of the duty and office of government, become equally unsettled and erroneous.
We have the authority of M. Reybaud—and we could bring other authorities if it were necessary—for saying that, in France, the habit of attributing the vices of individuals, not to their own weakness or ungoverned propensities, but to the malorganization of society, has shown itself in a strange and ominous indulgence to crime. It was the old fashion, he says, upon hearing of any enormity, to level our indignation against the perpetrator; it is now the mode, to direct it against that culpable abstraction, society. Society is, indeed, the sole culprit. When the novelist has detailed some horrible assassination, or gross adultery, he exclaims, Behold what society has done! The criminal himself passes scathless; if, indeed, he may not put in a claim to our especial sympathy, as having been peculiarly ill-used by that society, whose duty it manifestly was to make him wise, and humane, and happy. Man, in his individual capacity, is not to be severely criticised; the censure falls only upon man in his aggregate and corporate capacity. Polite, at all events. No one can possibly take offence at reproofs leveled at that invisible entity, the social body; or suppose for a moment that he is included in the censure. It used to be thought that the aggregate was made up of individuals, and that, in order to constitute a well-ordered community, there must be virtuous and well-ordered men. The reverse is now discovered to be the truth. First, have a well-ordered and divinely happy community, and then the individual may do as he likes; as our comedian says, "his duties will be pleasures."