e practical object of remoulding society
on general scientific principles, and they became the founders of
sects, Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Comte. They all announced a new era
of development as a necessary sequel of the past, an inevitable and
desirable stage in the march of humanity, and delineated its features.

Comte was the successor of Saint-Simon, as Saint-Simon himself was the
successor of Condorcet. Fourier stands quite apart. He claimed that
he broke entirely new ground, and acknowledged no masters. He regarded
himself as a Newton for whom no Kepler or Galileo had prepared the
way. The most important and sanest part of his work was the scheme for
organising society on a new principle of industrial co-operation. His
general theory of the universe and man's destinies which lay behind
his practical plans is so fantastic that it sounds like the dream of a
lunatic. Yet many accepted it as the apocalypse of an evangelist.

Fourier was moved by the far-reaching effects of Newton's discovery
to seek a law which would coordinate facts in the moral world as the
principle of gravitation had co-ordinated facts in the physical world,
and in 1808 he claimed to have found the secret in what he called the
law of Passional Attraction. [Footnote: Theorie des quatre mouvements et
des destinees generales. General accounts of his theories will be
found in Charles Fourier, sa vie et sa theorie, by his disciple Dr. Ch.
Pellarin (2nd ed., 1843), and in Flint, Hist. of Philosophy of History
in France, etc., pp. 408 sqq.] The human passions have hitherto been
sources of misery; the problem for man is to make them sources of
happiness. If we know the law which governs them, we can make such
changes in our environment that none of the passions will need to be
curbed, and the free indulgence of one will not hinder or compromise the
satisfaction of the others.

His worthless law for harmonising the passions without restraining them
need not detain us. The structure of society, by which he proposed to
realise the benefits of his discovery, was based on co-operation, but
was not socialistic. The family as a social unit was to be replaced by
a larger unit (PHALANGE), economically self-sufficing, and consisting
of about 1800 persons, who were to live together in a vast building
(PHALANSTERE), surrounded by a domain sufficient to produce all they
required. Private property is not abolished; the community will include
both rich and poor; all th