ocial novels. Between the creation of the mind and the life of
contemporary society there was no relation; they were worlds apart,
strangers to one another. The true Utopians scarcely troubled themselves
to make applications. Plato and More--would they have wished to realize
their dreams?

(2) An intermediate phase, when an attempt is made to pass from the
ideal to the practical, from pure speculation to social facts. Already,
in the eighteenth century, some philosophers (Locke, Rousseau) drew up
constitutions, at the request of interested persons. During this period,
when the work of the imagination, instead of merely becoming fixed in
books, tends to become objectified in acts, we find many failures and
some successes. Let us recall the fruitless attempts of the
"phalansteries" in France, in Algeria, Brazil, and in the United States.
Robert Owen was more fortunate;[145] in four years he reformed New
Larnak, after his ideal, and with varying fortune founded short-lived
colonies. Saint-Simonism has not entirely died out; the primitive
civilization after his ideal rapidly disappeared, but some of his
theories have filtered into or have become incorporated with other
doctrines.

(3) A phase in which imaginative creation becomes subordinated to
practical life: The conception of society ceases to be purely idealistic
or constructed _a priori_ by deduction from a single principle; it
recognizes the conditions of its environment, adapts itself to the
necessities of its development. It is the passage from the absolutely
autonomous state of the imagination to a period when it submits to the
laws of a rational imperative. In other words, the transition from the
esthetic to the scientific, and especially the practical, form.
Socialism is a well-known and excellent example of this. Compare its
former utopias, down to about the middle of the last century, with its
contemporary forms, and without difficulty we can appreciate the amount
of imaginative elements lost in favor of an at least equivalent quantity
of rational elements and positive calculations.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] This title, as will be seen later, corresponds only in part to
the contents of this chapter.

[140] For facts in support, see the _Psychology of the Emotions_,
Second Part, chapter VIII.

[141] Our author does not mention Bacon's _New Atlantis_, one of the
best specimens of its kind. "Wisest Verulam," active and
distinguished in so many fields, is not amen