The scheme thus sketched attracted no attention when the Théorie first appeared, and for some years Fourier remained in his obscure position at Lyons. In 1812 the death of his mother put him in possession of a small sum of money, with which he retired to Bellay in order to perfect his second work. The Traité de l’association agricole domestique was published in 2 vols. at Paris in 1822, and a summary appeared in the following year. After its publication the author proceeded to Paris in the hope that some wealthy capitalist might be induced to attempt the realization of the projected scheme. Disappointed in this expectation he returned to Lyons. In 1826 he again visited Paris, and as a considerable portion of his means had been expended in the publication of his book, he accepted a clerkship in an American firm. In 1829 and 1830 appeared what is probably the most finished exposition of his views, Le Nouveau Monde industriel. In 1831 he attacked the rival socialist doctrines of Saint-Simon and Owen in the small work Pièges et charlatanisme de deux sectes, St Simon et Owen. His writings now began to attract some attention. A small body of adherents gathered round him, and the most ardent of them was Victor Considérant (q.v.). In 1832 a newspaper, Le Phalanstère ou la réforme industrielle was started to propagate the views of the school, but its success was not great. In 1833 it declined from a weekly to a monthly, and in 1834 it died of inanition. It was revived in 1836 as Le Phalange, and in 1843 became a daily paper, La Démocratie pacifique. In 1850 it was suppressed.
Fourier did not live to see the success of his newspaper, and the only practical attempt during his lifetime to establish a phalanstère was a complete failure. In 1832 M. Baudet Dulary, deputy for Seine-et-Oise, who had become a convert, purchased an estate at Condé-sur-Vesgre, near the forest of Rambouillet, and proceeded to establish a socialist community. The capital supplied was, however, inadequate, and the community broke up in disgust. Fourier was in no way discouraged by this failure, and till his death, on the 10th of October 1837, he lived in daily expectation that wealthy capitalists would see the merits of his scheme and be induced to devote their fortunes to its realization. It may be added that subsequent attempts to establish the phalanstère have been uniformly unsuccessful.[1]
Fourier seems to have been of an extremely retiring and sensitive disposition. He mixed little in society, and appeared, indeed, as if he were the denizen of some other planet. Of the true nature of social arrangements, and of the manner in which they naturally grow and become organized, he must be pronounced extremely ignorant. The faults of existing institutions presented themselves to him in an altogether distorted manner, and he never appears to have recognized that the evils of actual society are immeasurably less serious than the consequences of his arbitrary scheme. Out of the chaos of human passion he supposed harmony was to be evolved by the adoption of a few theoretically disputable principles, which themselves impose restraints even more irksome than those due to actual social facts. With regard to the economic aspects of his proposed new method, it is of course to be granted that co-operation is more effective than individual effort, but he has nowhere faced the question as to the probable consequences of organizing society on the abolition of those great institutions which have grown with its growth. His temperament was too ardent, his imagination too strong, and his acquaintance with the realities of life too slight to enable him justly to estimate the merits of his fantastic views. That this description of him is not expressed in over-strong language must be clear to any one who not only considers what is true in his works,—and the portion of truth is by no means a peculiar discovery of Fourier’s,—but who takes into account the whole body of his speculations, the cosmological and historical as well as the economical and social. No words can adequately describe the fantastic nonsense which he pours forth, partly in the form of general speculation on the universe, partly in the form of prophetic utterances with regard to the future changes in humanity and its material environment. From these extraordinary writings it is no extreme conclusion that there was much of insanity in Fourier’s mental constitution.
Authorities.—Ch. Pellarin, Fourier, sa vie et sa théorie (5th ed., 1872); Sargant, Social Innovators (1859); Reybaud, Réformateurs modernes (7th ed., 1864); Stein, Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs (2nd ed., 1848); A.J. Booth, Fortnightly Review, N. S., vol. xii.; Czynski, Notice bibliographique sur C. Fourier (1841); Ferraz, Le Socialisme, le naturalisme et le positivisme (1877); Considérant, Exposition abrégée du système de Fourier (1845); Transon, Théorie sociétaire de Charles Fourier (1832); Stein, Geschichte der sozialen Bewegung in Frankreich (1850); Marlo, Untersuchungen über die Organisation der Arbeit (1853); J.H. Noyes, History of American Socialisms (1870); Bebel, Charles Fourier (1888); Varschauer, Geschichte des Sozialismus und Kommunismus im 19. Jahrhundert (1903); Sambuc, Le Socialisme de Fourier (1900); M. Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States (1903); H. Bourgin, Fourier, contribution à l’étude de socialisme français (1905).
(R. Ad.)
[1] Several experiments were made to this end in the United States (see [Communism]) by American followers of Fourier, whose doctrines were introduced there by Albert Brisbane (1809-1890). Indeed, in the years between 1840 and 1850, during which the movement waxed and waned, no fewer than forty-one phalanges were founded, of which some definite record can be found. The most interesting of all the experiments, not alone from its own history, but also from the fact that it attracted the support of many of the most intellectual and cultured Americans was that of Brook Farm (q.v.).
FOURIER, JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH (1768-1830), French mathematician, was born at Auxerre on the 21st of March 1768. He was the son of a tailor, and was left an orphan in his eighth year; but, through the kindness of a friend, admission was gained for him into the military school of his native town, which was then under the direction of the Benedictines of Saint-Maur. He soon distinguished himself as a student and made rapid progress, especially in mathematics. Debarred from entering the army on account of his lowness of birth and poverty, he was appointed professor of mathematics in the school in which he had been a pupil. In 1787 he became a novice at the abbey of St Benoît-sur-Loire; but he left the abbey in 1789 and returned to his college, where, in addition to his mathematical duties, he was frequently called to lecture on other subjects,—rhetoric, philosophy and history. On the institution of the École Normale at Paris in 1795 he was sent to teach in it, and was afterwards attached to the École Polytechnique, where he occupied the chair of analysis. Fourier was one of the savants who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt in 1798; and during this expedition he was called to discharge important political duties in addition to his scientific ones. He was for a time virtually governor of half Egypt, and for three years was secretary of the Institut du Caire; he also delivered the funeral orations for Kléber and Desaix. He returned to France in 1801, and in the following year he was nominated prefect of Isère, and was created baron and chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He took an important part in the preparation of the famous Description de l’Égypte and wrote the historical introduction. He held his prefecture for fourteen years; and it was during this period that he carried on his elaborate and fruitful investigations on the conduction of heat. On the return of Napoleon from Elba, in 1815, Fourier published a royalist proclamation, and left Grenoble as Napoleon entered it. He was then deprived of his prefecture, and, although immediately named prefect of the Rhone, was soon after again deprived. He now settled at Paris, was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1816, but in consequence of the opposition of Louis XVIII. was not admitted till the following year, when he succeeded the Abbé Alexis de Rochon. In 1822 he was made perpetual secretary in conjunction with Cuvier, in succession to Delambre. In 1826 Fourier became a member of the French Academy, and in 1827 succeeded Laplace as president of the council of the École Polytechnique. In 1828 he became a member of the government commission established for the encouragement of literature. He died at Paris on the 16th of May 1830.
As a politician Fourier achieved uncommon success, but his fame chiefly rests on his strikingly original contributions to science and mathematics. The theory of heat engaged his attention quite early, and in 1812 he obtained a prize offered by the Académie des Sciences with a memoir in two parts, Théorie des mouvements de la chaleur dans les corps solides. The first part was republished in 1822 as La Théorie analytique de la chaleur, which by its new methods and great results made an epoch in the history of mathematical and physical science (see below: [Fourier’s Series]). An English translation has been published by A. Freeman (Cambridge, 1872), and a German by Weinstein (Berlin, 1884). His mathematical researches were also concerned with the theory of equations, but the question as to his priority on several points has been keenly discussed. After his death Navier completed and published Fourier’s unfinished work, Analyse des équations indéterminées (1831), which contains much original matter. In addition to the works above mentioned, Fourier wrote many memoirs on scientific subjects, and éloges of distinguished men of science. His works have been collected and edited by Gaston Darboux with the title Œuvres de Fourier (Paris, 1889-1890).