, of planting a universal truth
thereby which should some day affect all humanity. His scheme differed
from Comte's or Saint Simon's, in that it professed to go back to the
old patriarchal form for its mode of government, establishing under
that, however, a complete community of interest. Unlike other communist
reformers, too, Rapp did not look through his own class for men of equal
intelligence and culture with himself of whom to make converts, but,
gathering several hundred of the peasants from the neighborhood, he
managed to imbue them with an absolute faith in his divine mission, and
emigrated with them to the backwoods of Pennsylvania, in Butler County.
After about ten years they removed to the banks of the Wabash, in
Indiana; then, in 1825, returned to Pennsylvania, and settled finally in
Beaver County, some sixteen miles below Pittsburg, calling their village
Economy.

"A great man, as I conceive him, this Rapp," said Knowles. "His own
property, which was large, was surrendered to the society at its
foundation, and this to the least particular, not reserving for his own
use even the library or gallery of paintings pertaining to his family;
nor did the articles of association allow any exclusive advantage to
accrue to him or his heirs from the profits of the community. He held
his office as spiritual and temporal head, not by election of the
people, but assumed it as by Divine commission, as Moses and Aaron held
theirs; and not only did the power of the man over his followers enable
him to hold this autocratic authority during a long life, unimpaired,
but such was the skill with which his decrees were framed that after his
death this authority was reaffirmed by the highest legal tribunal of the
country.[A] With all his faith in his divine mission, too, he had a
clear insight into all the crookedness and weakness of the natures he
was trying to elevate. He knew that these dogged, weak Germans needed
coercion to make them fit for ultimate freedom; he held the power of an
apostle over them, therefore, with as pure purpose, it's my belief, as
any apostle that went before him. The superstitious element lay ready in
them for him to work upon. I find no fault with him for working it."

"How?" I asked.

Knowles hesitated. "When their stupidity blocked any of his plans for
their advancement, he told them that, unless they consented, their names
should be blotted out from the Book of Life,--which was but a coarse way
of