e products of their work are distributed in
shares according to the labour, talents, and capital of each member, but
a fixed minimum is assured to every one. The scheme was actually tried
on a small scale near the forest of Rambouillet in 1832.

This transformation of society, which is to have the effect of
introducing harmony among the passions, will mark the beginning of a new
epoch. The duration of man's earthly career is 81,000 years, of which
5000 have elapsed. He will now enter upon a long period of increasing
harmony, which will be followed by an equal period of decline--like the
way up and the way down of Heraclitus. His brief past, the age of
his infancy, has been marked by a decline of happiness leading to the
present age of "civilisation" which is thoroughly bad--here we see the
influence of Rousseau--and from it Fourier's discovery is the clue to
lead humanity forth into the epoch in which harmony begins to emerge.
But men who have lived in the bad ages need not be pitied, and those
who live to-day need not be pessimistic. For Fourier believed in
metempsychosis, and could tell you, as if he were the private secretary
of the Deity calculating the arithmetical details of the cosmic plan,
how many very happy, tolerably happy, and unhappy lives fall to the lot
of each soul during the whole 81,000 years. Nor does the prospect end
with the life of the earth. The soul of the earth and the human souls
attached to it will live again in comets, planets, and suns, on a system
of which Fourier knew all the particulars. [Footnote: Details will be
found in the Theorie de l'unite universelle, originally published under
the title Association domestique-agricole in 1822.]

These silly speculations would not deserve even this slight indication
of their purport were it not that Fourier founded a sect and had a
considerable body of devoted followers. His "discovery" was acclaimed by
Beranger:

Fourier nous dit: Sors de la fange,
Peuple en proie aux deceptions,
Travaille, groupe par phalange,
Dans un cercle d'attractions;
La terre, apres tant de desastres,
Forme avec le ciel un hymen,
Et la loi qui regit les astres,
Donne la paix au genre humain.

Ten years after his death (1837) an English writer tells us that
"the social theory of Fourier is at the present moment engrossing the
attention and exciting the apprehensions of thinking men, not only in
France but in almost every country in E