Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/361

FOURIER 353 by accident. Flying to Besancon, he was again incarcerated as a suspicious person. By join- ing the revolutionary army, he was enabled to exchange the cell for the saddle, and served nearly two years as a trooper in the army of the Rhine. He obtained his discharge on ac- count of ill health, Jan. 24, 1795. During his connection with the army he made important military suggestions to the government, for which he received its thanks through Carnot. Subsequently also he attracted the attention of Gen. Bonaparte by a political essay put forth in a local journal. On regaining his liberty, he resumed his commercial pursuits. Employed in a wholesale warehouse at ^Marseilles,, he was chosen to superintend a body of men while they secretly cast an immense quantity of rice into the sea. France had been suffering from scarcity during the year, and these monopo- lizers had allowed their stores to rot rather than sell them at a reasonable profit. Fourier after- ward devoted himself to the study of the means of effectually preventing such abuses of mo- nopoly. In 1799 he believed that he had discov- ered "the universal laws of attraction," and the essential destiny of humanity upon earth. He spent many years in elaborating these dis- coveries ; his first work, called Theorie des quatre mouvements et des destinees generales, was not published till 1808, when he issued the first volume, which was merely a prospectus of the work, intended to procure the means of publishing the rest by subscription; but France being then agitated by the projects of Napoleon, no attention was given to it. It did not make a single convert till 1814, when a copy of it fell into the hands of Muiron of Besancon. As it bore the imprint of Leip- sic, without the name or address of the au- thor, it was a long time before he was able to find out Fourier, who then resided at Bel- ley. Muiron afterward assisted him in the preparation and publication of his works. In 1822 Fourier removed to Besangon, and pub- lished the first two volumes of his work under the title of Traite de V association domestique agricole, which in its latest form appeared un- der the more imposing title of Traite de V unite universelle, and was the great work of his life. As originally conceived, it was meant to em- brace nine volumes, in the following order : 1, the abstract principles of passional attraction, and their partial application to industrial asso- ciations ; 2, familiar synthesis of the principles of attraction, and their equilibrium in practice ; 3, the analysis of man's physical, moral, and mental nature, individually and collectively, with regard to individual society and universal unity; 4, methodical synthesis and transcen- dental theory ; 5, commercial duplicity and ruinous competition ; 6, the false development of human nature, and a regular analysis and synthesis of a false development of universal nature, as an exception to universal harmony ; 7, universal analogy and illustrations to cos- mogony ; 8, the scientific theory of the immor- tality of the soul ; and 9, dictionary of contents and references to the whole work. Two vol- umes only were printed at Paris, and these attracted no attention. Five years later Fou- rier drew up a brief summary of their contents under the title of Nouveau monde industriel et societaire, in the hope of getting them into notice in that way. In 1831, when the St. Simonians began to make a stir' in France, Fourier, who had established himself in faris, published a pamphlet against them and the followers of Robert Owen, accusing them of utter ignorance of social science, and of gross charlatanry in their pretensions; and from that time his writings began to receive the attention of minds inclined to such studies. Many of the disciples of St. Simon, seeing the more precise and scientific nature of Fourier's socialism, abandoned their old master for this new teacher. On June 1, 1832, a journal of the socialistic doctrines of Fourier was be- gun under the name of Le Phalanstere. A joint-stock company was formed to realize the new theory of association, and one gentle- man, M. Baudet Dulary, bought an estate at a cost of 500,000 francs. Operations were com- menced, but for the want of paying sharehold- ers the community dispersed. In 1835 Fourier published another work, La fausse industrie, morcelee, repugnante et mensongere, et Van- tidote, Vindustrie naturelle, combinee, attray- ante, veridique, donnant quadruple produit (1 vol. 8 vo) ; but it added nothing to his original discoveries. He was about to publish a second part when he died. On his tomb are engraved the three fundamental axioms of his doctrine : La serie distribue les harmonies; Les attrac- tions sont proportionelles aux destinees; Ana- logie universelle. He was buried in the ceme- tery of Montmartre in Paris. His friends had meanwhile replaced the Phalanstere, which was short-lived, by La Phalange ; and when the subject had created an audience for it- self, a daily paper, La Democratic Pacifique, was established, under the editorship of Vic- tor Considerant. This maintained the prop- agation till it was discontinued during the reactionary movements which followed the revolution of 1848. Fourier's doctrines ob- tained some vogue in France, where a school was regularly organized for their diffusion. At the head of it were Considerant, Oantagrel, Victor Hennequin, Laverdaut, Victor Meu- nier, and other ardent young men. In Eng- land Hugh Doherty placed himself at the head of the movement, and established a weekly paper called "The Phalanx," while in the United States Albert Brisbane, by his vehe- ment expositions of the subject, gave to it an immense eclat and temporary success ; but of late years it has died out of the public mind. Nevertheless, the scheme of Fourier deserves notice. He was a man of the noblest humane impulses, of rare acuteness and sagacity, and of original imagination. His negative criti- cisms of the disorders, the falsehoods, and the