ons. Falsehood and selfishness, systematic falsehood and
selfishness without a shadow of scruple, were at the basis of all our
commercial dealings. It was time, he thought, that a new order of things
should arise, founded upon veracity and a harmony of interests.

For himself, his part was taken. He became the man of one idea. "We
might rather say of him," writes M. Reybaud, "that he traversed the
world, than that he lived in it." He refused to enter into any
commercial dealings that might implicate him in the existing system, and
warp his feelings in favour of it; and exercised to the last, for a bare
subsistence, the mere mechanical employment of a copying clerk. He never
understood the art of making for himself two separate existences: one in
the domain of fiction or of thought; the other in the land of reality.
He passed all that might be called his life in the ideal world of his
own creating.

According to Fourier, there is but one deep and all-pervading cause of
the miseries of man: it is, that he does not comprehend the ways of God,
or, in other words, the laws of his own being. If humanity does not
_work well_, and with the same harmony that the planetary system
exhibits, it is because he is determined to impress upon it other
movements than those the Creator designed. Between the creature and the
Creator there has been, as he expresses it, a misunderstanding for these
five thousand years past.

The great error, it seems, that has been committed, is the supposing
that there are any passions of man which require to be restrained. God
has made nothing ill--nothing useless. You have but to let these
passions quite loose, and it will be found that they move in a beautiful
harmony of their own. These _attractions_--such is his favourite
word--are as admirably adjusted as those which rule over the course of
the planets. _Duty_, he says, is human--it varies from epoch to epoch,
from people to people. _Attraction_--that is to say, passion--is divine;
and is the same amongst all people, civilized and savage, and in all
ages, ancient and modern. At present the passions are compressed, and
therefore act unhappily; in future, they shall be free, satisfied, and
shall act according to the law they have received from God. To yield to
their impulse is the only wisdom; to remove whatever obstacles society
has placed in the way of their free exercise, is the great task of the
reformer.

Fourier does not hesitate to place hims