THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE PASSIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL. THE .PASSIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL, AND THEIR INFLUENCE ox SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION. BY CHARLES FOURIER. CtanglatctJ from tljc SF^tnd), WITH CaiTICAL A>3 NOTATIONS, A BIOGRAPHY OF FOURIER, AND A GENERAL INTRODUCTION. BY HUGH LOHEKTY. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. IL LONDON: HIPPOLYTE BAILLIERE, 219, REGENT STREET; AND 169, FULTON STREET, NEW YORK, U.S. PARIS : J. B. BAILLIERE, RUE HAUTEFEULLLE ; MADRID : BAILLY' BAILLIERE, CALLE DEL PRINCIPE. 1851. rrz I i CONTENTS OF VOL. H. Page. Section III. — Of the three Distributive Passions. Anterior Chapter 1 Chap. I. Of the composite or contrasted (dovetailing) passion, the twelfth passion of the radical octave 5 II. Of the cabalist, the tenth radical passion 13 III. Of the papillon, or love of alternation, the eleventh radical passion 27 IV. Recapitulation of the three distributive passions 39 V. Of the subversive play of the three distributives 51 VI. Nomenclature of the subversive gamut 71 Ulterlogue 81 PART III.— PASSIONAL DELIGHTS AND UNITYISM. Section I. — Of Farceurs, Transits, Flitting Raptures, Fassional Delights or Exhilarations, and of Unityism. Chap. I. Of the passional delights, or of the distributives raised in power 99 II. Of the mutilated and abortive passions 122 III. Of the pressure of the twelve radical passions 128 IV. Of the focal passion, called unityism. Sublimity of this passion 136 V. Progressive essence of the focal passion 143 VI. Of the necessity of foci disposed in gradation 152 VII. Of the three branches of the focal passion in its harmonic, subversive and mixed developments, and of its pivotal branch 158 Section II. — Appendix to the Passional Analysis. Chap. I. The tree — the hieroglyphic of the social world and of the passions 185 II. The direct passional tree and its branches or powers, graduated into the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth degrees 190 202929 vi CONTENTS. Pa e. Chap. III. Tlie subversive passional tree and its branches graduated in the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth powers 207 IV. The three subversive branches of the first power 213 V. Compound state of the powers of nature. Analogy between the material and the passional principles of nature 226 VI. Harmonies of the three sacred numbers — three, seven, and twelve 235 VII. Analogy derived from the aromal or planetary system 252 PART IV.— THE POTENTIAL SCALE OF CHARACTERS. Antimediate Chapter. Appreciation of the sciences as abstract and con- crete 287 Section I. — Of the Characters in general^ and of the Monogynes, or Simple Souls, in particular. Chap. I. Of the characterial degrees, and of their dominatives 296 II. Of the integrality of the soul 303 III. Integral gamut of the soul, or numerical distribution of the po- tential scale of the 810 characters 311 IV. Typical distribution of the characters of all degrees 315 V. Definition of the monogynes of the three orders 325 Intermediate Chapter. The contradiction of moralism in the management of the monogyne characters 339 Section II. — Of the Polygynes, or Characters of Compound Gamut. Chap. I. Notions respecting the ambiguous or polymixt characters 352 II. On the composite development or contrasted scale of polygynes. . 356 III. On the transcendent polygynes and of their use 367 IV. Of the omnigynes as pivots of infinitesimal movement 372 V. Of the characters of bi-potential gamut 384 Epimediate Chapter. The social prejudices, or the passional chrysalises . . 388 PART V— ON THE TRANSITIONS AND APPARENT DISORDERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Chap. I. On tlic transitions and apparent disorders of the universe 411 II. Parallel of the apparent vices of the movement, with the real vices of intellect. — Example taken from diffraction 421 III. The same parallel applied to transitions and sub-transitions .... 431 IV. The same parallel ap})lird to subversions 445 THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. THE PASSIONS OF THE SOUL. SECTION III. OF THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. ANTERIOR CHAPTER. " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread ;"* — such are^ according to Scripture, the words that God addressed to our first parent on dri\dng him from the terrestrial Paradise. Adam, before his condemnation, earned his bread without any trouble. He was consequently in a state of continual pleasure, of permanent attraction. In admitting literally this picture of the primitive state, it follows from it that we ought all to wish for the return of this state of attraction ; that order of things wherein all the bread was procured without going to seek it in the sweat of one's brow. Our critics, on seeing in the Treatise on Attraction a theory that speculates on nothing but pleasures, will reply to me : " The people must think of earning their bread, and not of amusing themselves." I grant it in the third, fourth and fifth societies of the following table : — * Genesis, chap, iii., verse 19. VOL. ir. B 2 ANTERIOR CHAPTER. 1. Confused intellectual association^ Eden. 2, Savageism. 3. Patriarcliism. 4. Barbarism. 5. Civilization. 6. Half- association, guaranteeism. 7. Simple mutilated harmony. 8. Compound diverging harmony. 9. Compound converging association.^ I grant it even in the second society, where the savage can only gain his living of fish and game in the sweat of his brow. But in the other societies that bear the name of asso- ciation, this sweat of the brow, this continual punishment of the industrious, is no longer necessary. Man finds in this state of association, and even in the sixth period or half-association, pleasure combined with labor, pleasure drawing on to labor; thenceforth he is no longer obliged to speculate on the sweat of his brow, on the strokes of the whip that force a negro to cultivate sugar, or on the dread of famine, that drives a civilizee day-laborer to toil. And since we are only treating of those societies in which attraction will reign, we have only now to speculate on the regulation of the pleasures, which will be synonymous with labor the moment that they shall draw to labor. Now this regulation of the pleasures depends on three passions, the tenth, eleventh and twelfth, called Dish'ibutives, and which arc in truth the lawgivers of harmony. Hitherto the sources of pleasure seemed confined to the nine passions already described, — five sensitives and four af- fectives. These nine well-known enjoyments are far from sufiicing to happiness : the senses lead us astray, draw us into excesses ; the groups engender discord. In short, these two classes of sensual and spiritual pleasures are only two sources of scourges, as long as we are ignorant of the laws of the passional balance. Hence the notion that our passions are our enemies. They are so accidentally, so long as Ave know not how to bring into action the third class of passions, the distributives, which have as their office the direction of the two other classes, and lead them to develop themselves by series of groups. The * See Chap,, I. of the Treatise on Transitions, in this vol. — Translator. ANTERIOR CHAPTER. 6 reader is about to see that the vacuum of the soul^ atra cum, is nothing more or less than the want or the pressure of the three distributive passions, which cannot be developed so long as we are wanting in passional series. Accordingly the monarchs and the sybarites, who have the four groups and the five luxuries at command, confess that they are still far removed from happiness, and that a frightful vacuum remains in their souls. It can only be filled up by giving vent to the three distributives, whereof the civilizee order suflFers little or no development. They may be compared to the driver who directs the two horses of a chariot ; these horses, left to themselves, will run away, will upset the chariot, and will fall with it down some precipice. Such is the effect of the two classes of sensitive and affective passions, when they are not directed by the third. They are either unknown or so blackened, that they have only the rank of vices. For the rest, conformably with the errors that I have just signalized on the subject of the nine others, it is not to be wondered at that people have erred in like manner on the subject of the three last that remain to be defined. As these three springs are only able to be fed by innu- merable enjoyments, God has necessarily contrived an infinity of pleasures to satisfy them ; and when the insatiability of these three passions shall be well known, it will be inferred from it beforehand that the state of empassioned series,* which is intended to satisfy them, cannot fail to procure more happiness to the least opulent of the harmonians than a powerful monarch can find in civilization. The three distributives regulate, in the following order, the disposition of pleasures and labors : — 10, or the cabalist creates piquant intrigues about the merest trifles ; these intrigues tend to distinguish the tastes by scale or series, according to the order adopted by God in created productions. 11, or the papillon or butterfly passion gives the charm of * See note, p. 391. B 2 4 ANTERIOR CHAPTER. novelty to each function by a system of judiciously distributed contrasts; it regularizes consumption by proportioning the variety of tastes to that of productions. 12, or the composite exalts the pleasures by means of each other, uniting them according to their adaptations ; it is the most powerful lever of labor, by the enthusiasm that it has the property of diffusing. It is thus that these three passions concur in the general mechanism of the nine others. We may vary to a great extent the names that may be given them ; here is a list of some : — 10. Cabalist — discord, intriguing, dissenting. 11. Papillon — varying, crossing, alternating. 12. Composite — accord, dovetailing, coinciding. The reader can revert to this choice of names after he has read the definitions of the three distributives. It has appeared necessary to define the twelfth or com- posite before the eleventh and tenth; we shall, therefore, commence with it. CHAPTER I. OF THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED (DOVETAILING) PASSION, THE TWELFTH PASSION OF THE RADICAL OCTAVE. No passion is more sought after in the civilizee order than the COMPOSITE. It is the assemblage of two compatible plea- sures^ which have^ moreover, sufficient affinity to mutually enhance each other, like those of a (successful) love, that unites in the highest degree the enjoyments of the soul to those of the senses. The composite or dovetailing passion tries to ally and cause a cotemporary enjoyment of two or several pleasures, whereof the union raises enthusiasm to extasy. It is a very simple pleasure, whatever the dehcacy of the cheer, to enjoy a good meal alone, after the fashion of the Chinese and of the Parisians, who eat in isolation at little tables, like spiders^ webs, — all distrusting each other. If to this sensual pleasure is joined that of a party of intimate friends, we have a group of Friendship united to the pleasure of taste, and a develop- ment of the composite, which is the most vehement of the passions, the source of enthusiasm, and the foe of reasoning. Man, in this state of intoxication, is no longer master of himself; he obeys attraction wholly. The composite being formed by an assemblage of several pleasures, is either crossed, or bastard, or multiple, according to its alliances. 1st. It is crossed when it unites a pleasiu'e of the soul to one of the senses ; as in a party of friends backed by a glo- rious feast, or a couple of lovers enjoying spiritually and materially. 6 THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED PASSION. 2ndly. It is bastard when it congregates two pleasures lioraogeneous in kind — two pleasures of the soul, or two pleasures of the senses. To partake of a good meal and hear a good concert at the same time, is an amalgamation of two sensual pleasures, but one that excites little enthusiasm un- less it is managed with skill, though the two pleasures can be very well united. The same thing might be said of the double spiritual pleasures ; for they have the defect of exciting a feeble enthusiasm when there is nothing for the material. Now, observe that lively enthusiasm is the character of the full or crossed composite ; it only takes place by the inter- vention of the material and of the spiritual. Nevertheless, the bastard composite can, in certain cases, raise enthusiasm to a very high pitch. To marry a son whom you love to a rich heiress beloved by him, is an amal- gamation of two spiritual pleasures, the one of familism, the other of ambition, which must, at the moment of the ac- cords, excite a very great joy in the father. 3rd. The composite is potential, or multiple, when it con- gregates several pleasures of the soul and of the senses, as happens sometimes in love, where you may cumulate most of the nine sensual and spiritual pleasures. A poor lover, to whom his mistress furnishes pecuniary assistance, parties, and good meals, and whom she promises to raise to lucrative situ- ations, enjoys with her several coincident sensual pleasures, and several spiritual pleasures. He is in multiple composite. This passion, when it is in full swing, excites a sort of vertigo, during which man thinks himself a demi-god, and becomes, in his extasy, incapable of reasoning. It is conse- quently the principal enemy of philosophy, which wants to guide us by cold reason. The animals experience this passion little, or hardly at all. They are contented with simple delights, such as eating in isolation. Turtle-doves, elephants, or some other species, have a few germs of composite. As for man, he is so com- pletely cut out for this kind of compound or dovetailed en- joyments, that wo commonly despise any one whom we see addicted to the simple pleasure. An egoist who indulges THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED PASSION. 7 in good cheer, without coupling a friend in it, is rallied, and greeted by reviling epithets. A man devoted to coarse or venal women, with whom he only enjoys the pleasure of the senses and not of the soul, is accused of having the tastes of a brute. People in like manner laugh at the romantic pates, the ninnies who, in the society of women, confine themselves to sterile adoration, without seeking for anything more. This is to content oneself with a simple, or at all events, a Hmited pleasure. Now all those who are seen to be addicted to a simple pleasure, are despised and scoffed at. It implies in the individual imperfect faculties, a soul incapable of the intoxication that springs from the composite. I have extolled two simple spiritual pleasures that will be in high esteem in harmony, like the four accords of spiritual prime (first degree*) ; but I have supposed that they would only be partaken of as relays and reliefs from the compound pleasures, and conjointly with them, because the simple order is only valuable and praiseworthy under this condi- tion. Companies are subject, like individuals, to be scofied at if they languish in simple pleasure. Irony attaches to every party that has only given birth to simple pleasiire, as happens with many sumptuous banquets, congregating ill-assorted and unacquainted guests, offering no other enjoyment than that of the table. In a case like this, the master of the house is laughed at in proportion to the expense that he has lavished on his dismal feast. We ridicule, in like manner, the circles where stately etiquette prevails, and which, being confined to the flattering of some magnates, leave no access open to com- pound pleasure, though people affect there a rapture that nobody feels. But when a well-assorted company can, in a short evening party, place itself in full composite by mixtures of material and spiritual pleasure, — gallantry, the ball, the dainty supper, and above all, cordiality, — then every one is enraptured with this * See Chap. III., p. 289-90, of Sec. I. of Part II. 8 THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED PASSION. state of delight, so rare in assemblies. Every one says, Why does not this state of festivity and intoxication always last ? why does it not revive every day ? If you return after this to your dismal home (menage), and to the routine of business and of morality, you think yourself fallen, like Apollo, from the heavenly abode into a place of exile. These moments, when parties rise to the delight of the composite, are infinitely feeble pictures of the delight that the harmonians will constantly enjoy in their agricultural and manufacturing labors, as in their repasts and diversions. I make use of the words, infinitely feeble pictures, and in proof of this it will be seen in synthesis, in the treatise on the Functions of Passional Series, that in their meetings they enjoy a host of composites greatly superior to those that can be tasted in our assemblies, even the best provided mth delights. The pursuit of the composite is the torment of the rich civilizees. They are frequently reduced to simple pleasures, little different from ennui; they are confounded in their assemblies at the small amount of deUght that they oflPer, They tax their wits with verbiage, and beat the bush to per- suade themselves that the enchantment is at its height ; that everybody is drunk with enthusiasm. They speak emphati- cally of occasions that have often been very insipid, and depict to you the delight of the composite where not a shadow of it existed. The reason why we often see the great entertain envy to the coarse gaiety of the people, whose habits they nevertheless hate, is because the people, in its coarse meetings, arrives at the goal, at the composite, which the great do not reach in their starched and ceremonious fetes. The people, who have neither ambitious intrigues, nor care for the morrow, and who are moreover urged on by hunger, are very well satisfied at table with the guests that chance gives them. Provided the good cheer and wine are plentiful, a blackguard and his neighbors are immediately full friends. The common people, habituated to privations, relish a good meal infinitely more than the great, and yield tliemsclves freely up to friendship. THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED PASSION. 9 to enthusiasm, wliicli is kept up for a long time after the meal. Our blackguard, on coming out of the pot-house, bullies grief, roars with his fellows, brags, and thrashes his wife who speaks to him of anxiety about the household affairs and the children. He is on fire with the composite ; he fears to lose that beautiful passion which excludes all reasoning even in the recollections that it leaves behind it. God, who has rendered this passion so attractive to us, must, since he is just and good towards us, secure a very frequent development to the composite in the social mechan- ism for which he designs us. If he could have foreseen that he would not be able fully to satisfy us on this point, he ought to have given to us, as to the animals, the taste for simple pleasure, whereof he has inspired us with disdain, because he has prepared for us an affluence of compound pleasures in harmony. He ought then to have distributed attraction to us conformably to the results that his social system will yield us, in which the labors as well as the enter- tainments will commonly produce a double enjoyment, and will secure even to the poor his option respecting a host of composites in the course of every day. Whereas at present we see a crowd of personages on thrones, who can hardly procure one composite per day. The majority are in a posi- tion to say, like Madame de Maintenon, that they are dying of ennui in the lap of splendor, and have not perhaps one composite per week ; whilst in harmony the poorest of men, in health, will have every day, as the minimum of pleasures, 7 sessions of pleasures associated in composite ; 5 sessions of simple pleasure as reliefs ; 1 session of parcours^ presenting a host of pleasures heaped together in one and the same hour. Since the composite excites a violent delight — a transport of the soul and of the senses — men would soon be tired if the composites were not promptly relieved by simple plea- sures. This is the reason why the days in harmony, whatever * The French word is parcours, and means a rapid succession or crowding together of unexpected pleasures. See note to the word parcours, Chap. IV. of this Section. — Translator. 10 THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED PASSION. be the number of sessions^ have always at least a third of simple pleasure^ which becomes very agreeable in the interval between the composites^ whereof it forms the refreshment. The simple pleasure^ though insipid in itself, is a necessary alternation from the compound; they respectively support each other, and give each other weight by a judicious distri- bution. The bastard composite, which, paltry in itself, becomes very precious between two crossed composites, may be also employed with advantage as an interlude. For example : From 7 to 8^ a.m. crossed composite. From 8^ to 9^ bastard composite. From 9| to 11 crossed composite. During the hour of session devoted to the bastard, you are not deficient in pleasure, since you have two sensuals or two spirituals, enhanced by the recollection of a more agree- able session whence you have just issued, and of another more agreeable on which you are about to enter. It is thus that the rich, and even the poor, in harmony, speculate upon the pleasures and the interludes of each day. Let us recapitulate our account of this picture of the most brilliant of the passions. I am not afraid of venturing a few repetitions to facilitate the recollection of important details. The composite is, par excellence, the passion that may be called the voice of God, and I have given a proof of it that may seem paradoxical ; namely, that it draws us away before reflection and in spite of reflection. From the moment that it seizes hold of the man, he is the plaything of a superior and irresistible force, against which the effort of reason fails. Accordingly advice is without avail upon a brain elevated to this degree of enthusiasm ; and after some attempts at resist- ance, the individual becomes a greater slave than before. Did it happen otherwise, the voice of man, called reason, would be stronger than the voice of God, or attraction, which acquires all its strength by the intervention of the composite. No doubt this passion, as well as the two other distribu- tives, produces nothing but harm in the civilizec order ; but, need 1 repeat it a hundred times, it was not to lead us to the THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED PASSION. 11 civilizee mechanism that God has given us passions, boiling, and insatiable of delights, like the composite, the cabalist, the papillon ; which apart from harmony, are to us what fire-arms are in the hands of children. If we had been made for civilization, God would have given to us, as to animals, the taste for simple pleasures, — a disposition to live in poverty and persecutions. It would have been as easy for God to give us these inclinations, as to inspii'e us with the thirst for riches and delights, the desire for which we must in the end pardon, since we possess the secret of loading the human race with them. Does not God owe us the immensity of happi- ness whereof he excites the desire in us? The reader is going to see that he has well provided for it. Let us pa- tiently finish the analysis of the twelve passions, and we shall be coniinced, in the treatise on Series, that God has prepared everything to load us with happiness a hundred times greater than all the pictures of Olympus and the palaces of the fairies. This happiness will depend chiefly on the frequent deve- lopment of this delicious passion named composite, which the poorest of men will enjoy at least seven times per day in harmony, and often twelve times : whereas amongst us, the richest man and the most high-born woman cannot, in the course of their* day, procui*e one hour of composite enjoy- ment ; or at all events, only obtain it by some hidden and illicit intrigue, which must be kept secret, or by some odious machination, Hke that of calumniators and plunderers, who find a composite in their backbitings and frauds, from which they obtain profit and consideration. For wickedness is the best road to success in ci\dlization. Those who have attentively read the definition of the composite will perceive that this passion is the pledge of hap- piness ; but its enthusiasm not being able to be prolonged beyond the space of two hoiu's, it must consequently be fre- quently relieved ; and in order to procure a great variety of composites, great riches are required, in which ninety-nine hundredths of men are wanting. Consequently it is not in ci\ilization that the human race 13 THE COMPOSITE OR CONTRASTED PASSION. can satisfy the composite ; if so, why should God have given it us if He destined us for the civilizee system, where this, above all our passions, is the most impossible to satisfy ? It is with this passion as with the eleven others, whereof the pressure exists, and wearies us when they are not satis- fied. Some learned people wish to make us infatuated with moderate pleasures, with middle class and moral emo- tions ; but it is sufficient for the composite to have been experienced but once to make us constantly desire to find again its brilliant enthusiasm. Bernardin de Saint Pierre is astonished at this want, and exclaims : " Why has the feel- ing that yesterday raised me to the skies vanished to-day ? Archimedes did not always remain enraptured or beside him- self through his geometrical discoveries, and Pythagoras be- held at last coolly, in sang-froid, the square of the hypothe- nuse, for the discovery of which he had, we are told, vowed a hundred beeves to Jupiter. Why must there be novelties to give us pleasure ? The brute is on this score happier than we are ; what pleased him yesterday will please him again to-morrow : he plants himself at a certain limit without going beyond it ; what is enough for him seems to him always beau- tiful and good." But the beast is not subject as we are to the pressure of the three distributives, and especially to that of the compo- site, the enthusiasm of which not being able to last beyond two hours, necessitates the intervention of the papillon or alternating passion, of which we shall speak in the sequel. CHAPTER II. OP THE CABALIST, THE TENTH RADICAL PASSION. The spirit of cabal is the passion that is most cried down by the philosophers, and yet the one that is the most common to all their sects. It has been unreasonably confounded with ambition. Our analysts comprise under the name of ambition a host of different and often contradictory passions. The man who stands aloof from intrigues in order to cultivate and improve his estate, is not a caballer from inclination, since he avoids the stage of cabalistic plots ; yet he is ambitious of industrial fortune. You must, therefore, be careful not to confound ambition with the spirit of cabal and dissent, such as you see burst forth among our operatives, who, under the name of rival lodges,* form two turbulent and quarrelsome cabals, from which they can only reap blows and imprison- ment. This cabalistic mania arises from a pressure of the tenth passion, which requires intrigues, struggles, schisms and discords of any kind. If you cannot give it useful ones, it creates mischievous ones. Our passions are incompressi- ble ; they must have their way in good or in evil. Diversity has its uses as well as accord in the mechanism * Gavots et devorants are two traditional terms, supposed to be derived from the masonic confraternities of the middle ages. They designate two masonic cor- porations of carpenters on the continent, as Masons and Odd Fellows form dif- ferent lodges in England. They have certain feuds which sometimes disturb the peace of certain towns where they meet together. — Note communicated by Mr. Hugh Doherly. 14 THE CABALIST. of harmony. You see in an organ-case each pipe bordering on two that disagree with it ; the same thing must be eiFected in forming the scales of the passions and of characters ; and the first work to be undertaken in a foundation of harmony will be to arrange a host of disagreements for each person : a principle widely differing from our 400^000 volumes of wisdom, which requii'c that men should be all brothers, all of one opinion. Nature requires a contrariety of tastes that should give birth in all to the cabalistic spirit ; a passion to which you might give the name of social salt, for it is the seasoning and the stimulant of our relations, and you hardly find a twelfth part of the characters that can do without habitual cabals. A very comical contrast is the influence of the cabalist as compared with the vociferations of the sages against cabals. There is no legal assembly but opens its proceedings by an invocation to the Holy Ghost (the chant Veni Creator^), to ask Him to transform the members of the assembly into a family of brothers, all of one mind. I have observed before, that the Holy Spirit, to prove the absurdity of their petition, condemns them all to become a troop of frantic caballers, Avho on coming from mass, run to organize the first cabals in their committee rooms. This invocation of the Holy Ghost, this petition to be- come all brothers, all enemies of cabal, is it not a direct and insolent criticism on the operations of God? Is it not as much as saying to him underhand : " Supreme Being, thou hast created twelve passions, to which thou hast subjected us. We will not obey thee. We wish that thou shouldst surrender to the sage counsels of Plato and Robespierre, that thou shouldst suppress these passions that have not the honor of pleasing the philosophers." Is it not appropriate that, as his only reply to so impertinent a demand, God con- demns the petitioners to run from the chiu'ch to the com- mittees of cabals ? Let us proceed regularly to the analysis, and let us ob- * A chant that begins " Veni Creator Spiritus," addressed specially to the Holy Ghost, and used in the Roman Catholic Church. — Translator. THE CABALIST. 15 serve, in the first place, the prodigious influence of the cabal- istic spirit, after which we shall examine its uses. We know that little is required to kindle the spirit of cabal : witness the futile quarrels of the quis-quis and of the quamquam, and so many others of the same calibre, that have often caused torrents of blood to flow, though the sub- ject in itself was not worth the sacrifice of a brimstone match. The Greeks of the Lower Empire, at the moment when their capital was threatened by the Turks, were in deadly dispute about the light of Mount Tabor.^ It would have been better to have le\ded battalions. From practical absurdity let us pass to theoretical ab- surdity. Our philosophers, convinced of the scourges caused by the spirit of cabal, think fit to stifle it ; but they cannot — it is a passion inherent in the human mind. You must therefore set about utilizing it ; and when you shall know the means of doing this — which is to employ passional con- trasted series — so much advantage will be derived from cabals, that you will only have to occupy yourself with kind- ling and developing them in numerous parties, in graduated and classified disagreements, in different groups, forming an ascending and descending series. Observe, I do not speak here about civilization, where every cabal becomes a departure from order ; I am only treating of harmony, where the means will be had of ba- lancing the cabals, which from that time will become emi- nently useful. They will give birth, in the most insipid function, like tillage, to a crowd of rivalries, that will vio- lently stimulate the industrious, and will attach more charms to the agricultural and manufacturing functions than are presented now by the amusements of civilization. Let us not forget that in that state the laborer works under a moveable tent, in the company of friends, and in beautiful workshops, in short and intriguing sittings; that * A famous dispute of the monks of Mount Athos, in Roumelia, respecting the nature of the light surrounding the Father when he spoke to the Son on Mount Tabor, during the transfiguration. This light was supposed to be un- created, eternal, and the Divinity itself. (See Beausobre.) — Translator. 16 THE CABALIST. he is well clothed, well fed, that he only chooses those branches of labor that are agreeable to him. Without these accessories, how do you suppose that agricultural labor will become attractive ? Let us first prove the necessity of the cabalistic vehicle. Most men and still more women are only happy inasmuch as they have intrigues to engage in or to forward. If they cannot play first fiddle, they like at least to cut some figure. Intrigue, whether of love or of ambition, is an aliment so necessary to the human mind, that when you collect a party you are obliged in all countries to supply it with card-tables, to engross the minds by a semblance of cabalistic strife, and prevent apathy, that would very quickly spring up if the assembly had no intrigue to carry on. Female parties are reproached on account of their paltry plots respecting mat- ters of dress, the gew-gaws of fashion ; the men, on their part, do just the same in the cause of elections, and children for their mischievous farces ; so that the whole of society can decline the verb, " I cabal, you cabal, he cabals.'^ This want of intrigue impels us to seek, at the theatre and in romances, an image of cabal, a shadow of the tenth passion, of which we are deprived. The classes accustomed to intrigue, the courtiers, the stock-jobbers^ women of gal- lantry, know no greater torment than that of being suddenly deprived of intrigue by some mishap or exile, that excludes them from the cabalistic arena. Transport an intriguer into a sweet country home, very moral, very monotonous, lining on boiled turnips and moral stews, confining its pleasures to the contemplation of simple nature and rural bores, and you will see the intriguer dry up with ennui. The philosophers themselves, who want to make us all enemies of cabal and of intrigue, are its warmest partizans ; and if the authorities did not restrain them, they would knock over without intermis- sion the social world by their cabals, clubs and pamphlets. There is not one of them who does not seek to shew himself on the arenas of intrigue, especially at court, and who does not worry himself to escape from the moral languors of do- mestic life. The women have still more ardor than the men THE CABALIST. 17 for the spirit of intrigue. It is the appanage of weakness, and at this rate ought to be very dear to the civilizees, who all compressed in the development of their passions, have a \dolent tendency to intrigue, and to seek some channel of passional development in cabals. If the spirit of cabal were a vice that were displeasing to God, if this spirit were not necessary to his system of hai'- mony, why should he have given the property of the cabalistic spirit to all the masses ? This mania is the essence of all meetings, and yet God only wishes to operate upon masses, and not upon individuals, whose action is essentially false, according to the principles expounded in the Prolegomena. Let us examine the end of this passion, which is one of the chief wheels of the mechanism of harmony. In a deliberating assembly that is free, and occupied about some object capable of exciting its passions, such as administration, legislation, literature, criticism, &c., opinions will be seen to divide from the outset into three principal parties, whereof the first and the third will be opposed, irre- concilable ; and the second, a mixed party that will hold the balance, will temper more or less both extremes. It is an effect that is observed in all great meetings, from the diets or legislative assemblies, to the inferior coteries, like the reli- gious houses, circles of pleasure, &c. If the disagreements have ever so little aliment, you will see the three great parties divide themselves into two or three little ones, that will give about nine secondary parties — nine cabals — which Avill have points of contact and of union between each other, according to the method explained in the Prolegomena. For example, in the famous National Assembly of '89, you might have easily distinguished the following parties, classed into three of genus and nine of species : — THREE PARTIES OF GENUS. A. — The royalists or aristocrats. B. — The constitutionals or moderates. C. — The republicans or demagogues. VOL. II. c 18 THE CABALI8T. PARTIES OF SPECIES. A. — 1. The ultra feudal royalists. 2. The mild royalists. 3. The shuffliug royalists. B. — 1. The half-royalist constitutionals. 2. The firm constitutionals. 3. The half-demagogue constitutionals. C. — 1. The mild demagogues. 2. The decided demagogues. 3. The ultra demagogues. Total, tliree parties of genus and nine of species, indepen- dently of the varieties that you might, moreover, have been able to distinguish in each of the nine sub-divisions. This classification of series is approximative ; a free series does not require, to reach its properties, to be so uniformly distributed. It may be that one of the three genera may furnish two or four species. The number three is tabular, and not strictly necessary. A principle that must be ob- served and laid down here is, the trinary division of the prin- ciples, the inevitable classification into two opposed genera and one mixed, a division that appears again in the three distributive passions, thus : — Cabalist. Papillon. Composite. Disagreement. Alternation. Accord. It is quite indispensable that the three passions destined to create the mechanism of the series, should form between themselves this counterpoise, which you find in all the series, both measured and free.^ Every deliberating assembly falls speedily and spontane- ously into this division. You may predict it even before the corporation has met and held a sitting. It opens with oratorical twaddle ; it is proved very philosophically that all must be of one mind, all friends of trade and of the charter ; and the very same evening these fooleries of form are for- gotten, in order to obey attraction, the tenth passion, which * See the treatise on the Measured Scries, in the Phalange Revieiv. — Tranalator. THE CABALIST. 19 requires a power of cabals, well contrasted, and graduated in a threefold sense. I have said that nobody obeys this tenth passion more effectually than the philosophers who declaim against it ; and in the assemblies where these sages and their maxims rule paramount, you see caballing burst forth with such violence, that very speedily these virtuous republicans send each other in succession to the scaffold, for the balance of trade and morality, as was seen in 1793. In an assembly that is not sovereign, like an academy subject to laws that prevent these regulated decapitations, you always find these three parties of genus again sub-divided into leagues or coteries of species. It remained to be determined why God has given to hu- man assemblies this property of cabal that is described to us as vicious, but which will be judged of very differently when I shall have made the reader acquainted with its object — the formation of the passional series and their contrasted grada- tions, conformably to the order that God has followed in all his creations. Our naturalists, in their tables of the kingdoms, conform to this disposition, which may be called divine, since God has established it everywhere. Our passions tend to develop themselves in the same order, and to form the series every- where. It is impracticable in civilization, where the do- mestic societies — reduced to the smallest number, to a single family — cannot tally with this classification. The want does not the less exist in our souls, and we see, in every numerous assembly, this mania of cabal germinate, which tends to give relief, to distinguish into shades, and graduate the fancies, to create the disagreements and germs of the series. It ought to apply a group to the exercise of each fancy, and distribute the sum total of the groups into three divisions, one centre and two wings. It was in order to coincide with the tenth passion that God distriljuted in this manner the animals, vegetables, and minerals, which will be the objects of the functions and intrigues of industry in the passional series. c 3 20 THE CABALIST. I have already given some views of this division, to which it is proper frequently to revert, before coming to the sections devoted to the table of the series. If a genus of fruit^ yielding a hundred varieties, contains thirty that are applicable to a certain district, its cultivators — that is to say, those only who will be passionately devoted to the care of this fruit — will be sub-divided into a cabalistic series of thirty groups, each of them affected to the care of one of the branches to which it will be partial. Each group will intrigue in favor of that which it has adopted, and against the two varieties contiguous to its own. Each indi- vidual will intrigue in favor of the different groups in which he shall play his part ; for in a culture of pears or apples, an individual can very well take part in favor of four or five species, and enrol himself in the same number of groups in favor of which he cabals, and whereof he supports the cul- ture by pecuniary or other means. It will be thus with all the industrial functions, and par- ticularly that of the household, of which a fearful confusion is made in civilization, by charging one woman only, wife or servant, with the whole business. Yet these functions are of an immense variety, and it is not extravagant to estimate their sum collective at — 10 containing 12 genera. 30 40 species. 100 120 varieties. 300 400 shades. A poor housekeeper is therefore obliged amongst us to be loaded with these innumerable details; she is obliged to take care of the kitchens, cellars, barns, stables, gardens, orchards, fruit-loft, confectionary, larder, washhouse, sewing, &c., &c., and of the varieties of these different genera. In the garden alone a housekeeper may have fifty species to look after, and in the kitchen almost as many, in the cellar at * For a more detailed description of the series and groups cultivating the varieties of produce in harmony, the reader is referred to chap. v. of Fourier's Treatise on the Measured Series, and pp. 175 — 182 of Karl Grmi's Soziale JJrweffjuiff. — Translator. THE CABALIST, 21 least twenty; that is to say, the housekeeper is obliged to mind alone all the household works, that would require the intervention of more than three hundred groups in a phalanx of passional harmony : accordiugly the lady holds this household work in aversion, whereof the least branch is so much above her means, and presents no fuel for intrigue. Every woman would willingly join in three or four branches of these labors, if she found there cabalistic parties and other vehicles ; but being obliged to embrace the task of a hundred or two hundred corporations, she is exhausted, disheartened. She cannot fail to have an aversion for household labors, or to perform them without intelligence, as happens with our housekeepers, the most renowned of whom are novices and incapable, in comparison with the intelligence of the passional series, where every variety, every shade, employs a group violently empassioned, and consequently very intelligent ; for you only do well in industry what you do with passion. These details are an anticipation of the synthesis, or trea- tise on the ]Mechanism of the Series ; we are here only engaged with the analysis of the three passions, which are germs of series. Let us finish with the cabalist, which our sages re- commend us to hate ; a strange piece of ad\dce in a century where the love of trade is extolled, which is an entirely caba- listic business ; witness stock-jobbing and forestalling, and the inferior devices, such as crimping, puffing, and other industrial snares. I have sufficiently proved the existence of the passion called cabalist ; it only remains for us to distinguish its two developments, the harmonic and the subversive. The harmonic cabalist is a productive converging emula- tion, a competition to rival in economy and in industrial perfection. The subversive cabalist is a destructive opposition, or con- nivance to rival in ruining and depravation. Emulative cabal binds all the series, slightly isolating itself from the extremes or transitions. Subversive cabal binds extremes, kings and soldiers, to op- press masses by a fusion of extremes. 22 THE CABALIST. The emulative cabal is easily distinguished from the sub- versive; the results on both sides must be productive and economical in order for emulation to exist. Manufacturers contending about a price, and perfecting their article to ob- tain it^ are in emulative cabal, for the result will be useful to each of them, and economical, inasmuch as it is useful to the mass of society by the improvement of industry. Mer- chants who contend in sales and lavish the costs of rivalry, multiply travellers to force the article, sell below the cost price to carry off a buyer from their neighbor, are in subver- sive cabalist. Their competition is mischievous ; it is nothing but a connivance of idle expenses and of insane measures that will be ultimately fatal to each of them, by impoverishing them and impelling them to bankruptcy. This extravagant rivalry will be in like manner ruinous to society, by the use- less consumption of capital, agents, journeys and pufferies, which, adding nothing to the produce, are a clear loss. This parallel of the manufacturer and of the merchant is the exact picture of the two cabalists and of the two compe- titions, the converging and the diverging. The manufactures tend collectively to economize, to simplify by machines that require fewer hands, shorten labor, and claim fewer agents from the cultivation of the soil. The merchants collectively tend, without wishing it, to complicate the mechanism, to overload it with parasitical agents and useless outlays. Since 1789, their number has tripled; their expenses, their jour- nies, correspondences and puffs are become triple and quad- ruple, for a function which (in the end) is still of the same extent. For a town of 100,000 souls does not consume more food or clothing than it did thirty years ago ; and yet the casting up of its mercantile agencies will give a number three times that of 1789, and a threefold employment of hands and of capital, un profitably diverted from productive labor, cultivation and manufacture. There exist, therefore, two competitions and consequently two cabalistic processes, whereof one operates complication and ruin, the other economy and perfection. This twofold development of the cabalist is common to all the passions. THE CABALIST. 23 For want of knowing tlie cabalist, which is nevertheless a very visible passion, our economists have missed the whole theory of the reductive* and truthful trade or competition, and have thro^ai themselves into the false theory, that of complicated, anarchical and lying competition. A comical error of these savans is that of having thought that the merchants are constantly directed by ambition, whereas they are very often moved by the subversive cabalist ; accordingly they are seen to compromise their fortune in out- lays of competition, of rivalry and stock-gambling. There is no longer ambition where there is an evident and advised risk of loss, as in the act of a merchant who undersells to crush his neighbor, and ruins himself to ruin another. Such a proceeding is not ambition, but subversive cabalist. If the philosophers had known the tenth passion, the cabalist, which they so admirably practise, they would have made this dis- tinction in commercial mechanism, and discovered that you must repress it, since it falls in all directions into the effects of the subversive cabalist : a profusion of agents and of capitals, loss of produce, &c. This jealous mania of the merchants is the antipode of the reductive competition, which ought to produce the greatest economy possible. How many other faults have been committed in social mechanism from having confounded ambition and the caba- list ! Their difference is seen everywhere. Do you not see in every country litigious men, who, from the love of carry- ing on intrigues in the law-courts, will bring twenty actions against their neighbors, and will ruin themselves in pleading for the pleasure of putting their rivals to expense ? M. Selves, who has written a work against law-suits, appears to be the most litigious man in France ; and such are, in general, the individuals who have the cabalist among their dominants : a passion that, almost always injurious in civilization, will be infinitely valuable in the mechanism of the series, where the mania for disagreement is the germ of classification, exact * By this term Fourier implies that simplifying of the machinery of commerce which he predicts in harmony, and which would reduce the number of unpro- ductive commercial agents to a minimum. — Tiann/a/nr. 24 THE CABALIST. gradation and active emulation, between all the groups. We sliali form a correcter judgment of tlie importance of this passion when we shall have defined the three distributives. The cabalistic spirit is only injurious amongst us from a deficiency of industrial aliment. Let us suppose four groups occupied in making a certain culture prevail, say four pears,"^ called the bury pear, — the blond, the grey, the brown and the green (bergamot piquetej. If these four masses of culti- vators carry on intrigues to gain for their fruit the upper- hand, make outlays to improve it and secure sufi'rages, or at least to create a mass of partizans by the excellence of each species, their cabals will have been very laudable, and as use- ful as those of the elections are injurious and unproductive ; and if these same men have each of them thirty industrial cabals, like those of the bury pear, there will only result from them prodigies of industry, a general phrensy of emulation. People will be convinced that disagreement in industrial series is as viseful as accord ; that it is requisite that each of the groups of the series should be jealous of the two conti- guous ones, and should cabal actively to carry off the palm, and cause the preference to be given to their own produce. It will be found useful that the group of the white bury pear should labor to take away partizans from that of the green bury, and in the same way with the others ; for from all these eff'orts, there will result an extreme perfection of each produce. The cabal, in this order of things, will become a passion as divine as it is now infernal, where its development only leads to injurious consequences, to the intrigues of stock- jobbing, to political commotions, &c. In reply to the detractors of the cabalist, you may prove, by a parallel of ambition and of love, that the cabalistic spirit is only vicious when it has too little aliment, and that the cabals accumulated in great number are a pledge of passional balance. In fact, love is balanced in the case of a young man, handsome and very wide in his nature, like Alcibiadcs. * Fdt farthiT ijaiticailurs relating to the grouj)s of iiearists, see the Treatise on the Measured Series, Chap. V. — Tranxlutor. THE CABALIST, 25 Each of his love intrigues is to him a subject of charm; he has ahvays the greater share of success^ at least three-fourths of triumph for one-fourth of failures; you might even say nineteeu-twentieths for one-twentieth. In this case his love cabals only occupy him slightly; he carries them on with the confidence of a soldier secure of victory ; he is not ab- sorbed by love, and can lead abreast other passions, like that of interest or ambition ; whereas a philosophical cock turtle- dove, entirely absorbed by his lady turtle-dove, will lose sight of a host of matters that he ought to have combined with his amours. Such a dove will have no readiness in business ; he will not know how to make ambition and love march abreast, like the man who conducts rapidly several love intrigues, and who handles love in accords of the fifth and sixth. In a case of this nature, his cabals are not limited. They extend from shepherdesses to queens ; they embrace the sum total of society, and combine the developments of ambition and of friendship with those of love and of familism or marriage. The man who is able to combine in this way the cabals of the four groups is the man who is balanced in affective pas- sions. He who neglects the three others for the sake of one of the four affections, he who neglects the three other affec- tive cabals for the love of country and of fraternity, is a fool, who in time finds out his folly, and perceives that he ought to have led abreast the four cabals, and to have thought of interest at the same time that he thought of fraternity. You only arrive at this equilibrium by dint of having many cabals in each of the four affectives and of the five sensitives. The moment that one of the nine is confined to a single intrigue, it absorbs everything ; and a character thus pre-occupied is nothing more than an abortion in civilizee affairs. Social perfection consists, therefore, in giving a full deve- lopment to the cabals in each of the nine passions, in order to balance the different sorts of cabals one by the other, instead of reducing them to the feeblest development, like that of the civilizee ambitions, which are deprived of de\'e- lopments ; or that of the l)arbarians, who, by the custom of 26 THE CABALIST. the liarem^ are deprived of the cabal of gallantry on the side of the man. Such a development becomes a tomb of love to man, instead of being its throne. It is this privation of cabals that transforms ambition into a gnawing worm to the civilizees. It is a stimulant to the courtiers, who have a hundred intrigues to carry on ; it is a sting for the small proprietor, who, with the delights of his rural and moral mediocrity, is maddened at not having influ- ence in elections, nor the means of acquiring the field that would improve his estate, nor chances of marrying his poorly portioned daughters. He maddens cordially at being with- out influence in the cabals, and confined in the paths of morality. He would require, to enjoy the passional balance, thirty cabals, at least, to follow, and illusions for each. In- stead of this full and varied career, he has often, as the only aliment of the tenth passion, a single cabal, a longing for a public office that he loses after all. What a difi*erence from the societary order, where every one meets with numerous cabals and chances of fortune and of glory, in connection with the merest trifles, such as with the care of a flower or fruit, — cares that present to him chances of advancement, as will be seen in synthesis in the treatise on the Passional Series. Let us infer from this view that the cabalistic spirit so criticised is only vicious by perversion, and that cabals, now so mischievous, would become eminently useful if you could increase their number thirtyfold, make them relieve each other properly, and spread them over the groups. But if they are in very small number, or limited to a single cabal for each passion, they lead to excesses, as happens with a viand offered once for all to a famished man, or liquors, wine, given at discretion to a populace that gorges itself without measure. The cabalists are identical and contrasted. Let us pass over these distinctions, provided we return to them, and let us not defer the definition of the three distributives, since we can only form a proper judgment of them by comparing them. CHAPTER III. OF THE PAPILLON, OK LOVE OF ALTERNATION, THE ELEVENTH RADICAL PASSION. Those who weigh words and not things will think that the papillon is the passion of flighty heads : they will consider this name of papillon as synonymous with inconstancy and frivolity. It is nothing of the kind. The gravest characters are often those that have the papillon among their dominants. It is true that the man, who had the papillon as his ex- clusive dominant, a monogyne of papillon, (we call monogyne* in the scale of characters the man who has only one dominant) would be a frivolous, inconsequent being, and of little worth, but a character that amalgamates the papillon Avith several other dominants, such as ambition, friendship, familism, the cabalist, becomes a man of great resources, and to prove this, Julius Csesar, the most perfect, the best organized head that was ever seen on the political stage, had not only the papillon among his co-dominants, but he had it as his super dominant. ■\ I give this name to that one of the dominants which has the casting vote, and takes the lead of the others in a character. Let us define the papillon by examples before defining it methodically. * See Chap. V., Sec. I. of the Scale of Ch&va.cters.— Translator . t For a complete explanation of these terms, borrowed from musical science, the reader is referred to Chap. I., Sec. I. of the treatise on the Scale of Characters in the present volume; and also to Chap. VII., Sec. II., Vol. I., on the Pas- sional Dominants and Tonics. — Tranitlatnr. 28 THE PAPILLON^ Every body must have seen some of those men who love to carry on at once a crowd of functions, whether of genus or of species ; if they are at work in an action at law, they will want to compose four briefs at once for four different causes. This mania of cumulation reigns even in their recreations. If they are reading a book, they will not finish it except they have three or four to read at a time — to day one, to-morrow another. They have a ricochet* or rebounding memory ; it is stronger than memories laboriously cultivated. A limited mind, a character of middling title like the monogynes (who are the lowest title in the general scale of characters), will be apt to think that this multiplicity of en- terprises will interfere with the success of each, and that the barrister who labours on four briefs at once — this morning at one, in the evening at another, and to-morrow at a third, will only make a mess of all four. On the contrary, if this barrister is a character codorainated by the papillon, his four briefs undertaken together will be much better, more com- plete, better written, than if he had composed them sepa- rately and each of them at one stroke. All the papillonists require functions broken, cumulated, and dovetailed. This passion follows in fact the course of the pretty insect that represents it, and whose flight is broken or alternate. Csesar dictated four letters at once to his secretaries, and with his own hand he wrote a fifth. Here is a very papil- lonized imagination, and none was ever seen stronger than Csesar's. In general, the polygynef papillonists have gigantic me- mories. The epithet of polygyne signifies that the individual has several dominants. If he had the papillon alone, he would be a raonygyne of papillon ; but if he has other pas- sions as dominants, he is a polygyne of papillon. Nature, that distributes faculties according to the uses that she premeditates, has been obliged to give a very strong • The term ricochet is used in the science of gunnery, to specify the curves described by mortar firing, as opposed to the point blank or direct aim. — Trans. t See Chap. II., Sec. II., of tlic Scale of Characters in the present volume. — Translator. OR BUTTERFLY PASSION. 29 memory to tlie papillouists because they are destined to eu- mulate many studies or labours. They must be able to cm- brace with facility five or six times more than a common memory. Hence it comes, that a papillonist does not retain writings little weighted with matter, and retains easily those that bristle with difficulties. T could retain by once reading twenty German or Arabic names, and I should not recollect four French ones. A papillonist will retain from the outset the syllabic chro- nograms, such as that one which unites all the oecumenical councils in a hexameter verse. Ni-co-e. Ca-co-co. Ni-co-la. La-la-la. Lu-lu-vi. Flo-tii. That is to say, Nicomedia. Chalcedon. Nicomedia. Lateran. Lugdunum. Florence. Constantinople. Constantinople. Constantinople. Lateran. Lugdunum. Trident. Ephesus. Constantinople. Lateran. Lateran. Vienna. The individual whom I heard recite it, wishing to regale us with a second syllabic chronogram, recited twice this one, Ba ca da fa, ga la ma na, A B C D, fe ge le me. His memory failed when he had to explain this second clironogram, and he declared that he no longer knew what it meant. A year after this, I recited his two chronograms to him ; and I asked him if he recollected the details of the second that he had not been able to explain to us at the time. He was amazed at my remembering exactly his chronograms that he had only twice recited, and whereof I had not taken a note. Such is the property of the papillonic memories, to which a heavy load is but a slight burthen ; they will not retain easy matters, such as French names. If I am given the ad- dress of a name, very easy to retain, like John or Giles, I shall not remember it the next day ; but if barbarous names are pointed out to me, such as Bischoffaverser, Klinkostrom, Oraczewski, Altenkirkorff, I shall retain twenty by simply reading them, where I should not retain two French names. The papillonists are beings that must be overloaded with functions ; they are commonly more intelligent in cumulating 30 THE PAPILLON, twenty employments than another man would be in cumulat- ing two. A journalist complained lately because a certain member of the Institute cumulated twenty-five different func- tions in his own person. It is possible that he may have performed the twenty-five better than two or three. Let us pass on to the definition. I owed this preamble to those who think that the papillon is the sign of a frivolous character. Far from that. It is the sign of a vigorous char- acter. It only pushes to frivolity in the instance where it dominates exclusively ; but when it dominates in concurrence with others, it imparts an extreme vigor to them. I have left the choice open, as to the selection of the names of papillon, varying, alternating passion, and others ; but I repeat that you will not be able to select with under- standing of the matter till after you shall have become ac- quainted with the use of the three distributives which can only be developed in the passional series. Let us await this theory. Till then, you may readily rely upon the nomencla- ture given by the inventor. To bring on the stage a passion so contrary to the oracles of philosophy, let us join hands with nature, who is an au- thority of some weight, even when she is in discord with phi- losophy. This ignorant nature, which has not condescended to con- sult Lycurgus and Seneca, requires papillonage in the mate- rial sphere. Let us first demonstrate this principle ; after- wards, according to the unity of system preached up by the philosophers themselves, we shall be bound to infer that if nature requires that papillonage should reign in material harmony, she wants to make it reign also in passional har- mony. As to the material, have any plants been ever seen to be fond of monotony ? No ; a particular wheat wants to change soil, and a soil wants to change seed ; this year wheat, another year barley, or rye; and even when a soil admits the same produce two or three years following, it does not like to re- ceive the seeds of the same produce that it has yielded. Ac- cordingly, the science of soils and their varieties is an essen- OR BUTTERFLY PASSION. 31 tial branch of agriculture. Plants, as well as soils, require an alternation in every direction. For instance, in reproduc- tion, such a plant as comes from seed — as the strawberry, the carnation — requires that it should be afterwards renewed by slips, by shoots, and that you should vary it as much as pos- sible, in plots, localities, &c., for want of which the plant degenerates. Nothing is better proved by experience. The animal kingdom is no less exacting on this point than the vegetable, and if you omit the precaution of crossing the breeds, you soon come to complete degeneration. Here, then, we have nature in material contradiction with morality, which preaches to us the love of monotony, of uni- formity, and which, moreover, betrays itself, for it promises us ever renewed pleasures in the moral system, in the practice of virtues, the contempt of riches, the love of boiled turnips and of black broth ? But what need is there of so much novelty in spiritual pleasure ? If philosophy blames novelty in material pleasure, does it believe in the duplicity of sys- tem ? No, most undoubtedly ; but if it wishes unity, you must admit in the passional as well as material sphere this taste for variety and butterflyism that is seen to burst forth in the whole of material nature. Let us define regularly the eleventh passion or papillon : it is the want of variety, relays, and contrast in pleasures, the want of an enjoyment that should come opportunely to make a diversion to another enjoyment that is ready to cease or to lose its edge. Of this nature is the surprize of a man who, on issuing from a fete and even before its end, learns unexpectedly his nomination to a great and very lucrative post ; this news becomes to him a second fete, the charm of which is enhanced by the state of contentment into which the first /e/e had thrown him. The liveliest pleasures become insipid if others do not promptly succeed them. To be happy, you must every day experience at least four of these delicious surprizes, in order that the day, estimated at the minimum of twelve sessions of pleasure, may have at least. 32 THE PAPILLON, A third with the papillou for tonic. A third with the cabalist for tonic. A third with the composite for tonic. The papillon gives happiness impromptu ; its most medi- ocre enjoyments become marvellous by the apropos, the op- portuneness^ with which it is able to decorate them. It has the property of making much of a little ; drawing two plea- sures from a single source, and retempering the soul by un- foreseen emotions. Thus it is one of the most meagre plea- sures to walk round your native town ; but to do so as the Trojans did after a siege of ten years,* or after a captivity in the dungeons of Algiers, and a return to your country, is one of the most lively pleasures, and which arises from simple comparison with the foregoing lot. It is an alternation, a de- velopment of this papillon, which is able to make something out of nothing, by the single charm of relays or of contrasts. According to the property common to the three distribu- tives, the papillon is of two species, distinguished into con- trasted and identical. 1st. The contrasted papillon arises from transitions from one extreme to another. For example : a company of syba- rites, accustomed to sumptuous banquets, will eat with great pleasure in a cottage, rustic fare, — milk and fruit served up in earthern vessels; they will find in this frugal repast a piquant contrast with their habits; the wooden spoon and the black bread will have the charm of novelty for them, and their collation in the cottage will be more gay than drawing- room festivals. If it were necessary to prolong this rural pleasure eight days, it would become a punishment; but limited to a sitting, it is a diversion for this fine company, and very fit to put it in spirits. Whence you perceive that the papillon has the precious faculty of making something out of nothing ; for you cannot imagine anything less, for people habituated to china and plate, than a repast of milk and black bread, served up in earthern vessels and eaten with wooden spoons. * See note, ji. 29 1, Vol. \.— Translator. OR BUTTERFLY PASSION. 33 2ndly. The identical papillon is a variety in pleasures of the same species^ as dinner. We take pleasure in a dinner- pai'ty of friends ; but an adage says : " Ennui was born one day of uniformity." This friendly dinner party must be varied every day as well by the assortment of the guests as by that of the dishes. A dinner party of friends may please three days consecutively, and provided there are some varieties of dishes or of guests ; but it will be necessary to vary it the fol- lowing days by a dinner of corporation, a dinner of strangers, a family dinner, a dinner of gallantry (diner galantj, &c., &c. Without this variation, the most friendly dinners will become flat by uniformity, or at all events they will lose a part of their charm, and it is a great fault in harmony to wear out or blunt pleasure. The passional series have no other end than that of keeping alive, of sharpening every pleasure by judicious and varied use, either by contrasts, or by the iden- tical varieties that I have just defined in treating of the two meals, one of which, taken beneath the thatch in earthern vessels, is a varying in contrast, and the other, diversified each day as regards the companies of friends and the cheer, a varying in identity. Let a pleasure be varied by contrast or by identity, the variation is always subject to two modes, which are : — The gradative and the improvised. The repasts that I have just described in the preceding paragraph would be an enjoyment o^ gradative papillon, since they would be formed successively of friends, of corporations, of illustrious strangers, of people of gallantry (monde galantj, &c. The pleasures of improvised papillon are emotions unex- pected which occasion an extreme surprise, as the repay- ment of a debt that you had given up for lost, the arrival of a friend whom the public represented as dead ; in these diff'erent cases the unforeseenness doubles the pleasure, and procures two enjoyments instead of a single one. Such is the efi'ect of a meal that soldiers find ready served in a post they have stormed, or that sportsmen unexpectedly meet VOL. II. D 84 THE PAPILLON, with in the forest by the forethought of one of the party, who takes good care not to apprize them of it ; for, by an- nouncing it, he would destroy the charm of surprise, and would diminish the pleasure by one-half — instead of a con- trasted impi^ovised papillon, he would only give them a con- trasted papillon. On recapitulating, it will be seen that the papillon is of two species, whereof each is subdivided into two modes : — The gradative contrasted. The improvised contrasted. The gradative identical. The improvised identical. It is only in the passional series that you can every day procure papillons thus varied. For want of these varyings, pleasure is subject to become stale; witness that of a se- raglio, which is hardly able to excite the enthusiasm of a sultan, though the seraglio was only invented to procure the pleasure of papillonism for the sultan. It is not found in the harem, because this assembly does not fulfil the condi- tions indicated further back in connection with the species and modes. Our sybarites more or less fall into similar stale- ness. You hear them complain of languor and want of illu- sion, when 3^ou would have thought them drunk with delights and rapt in the forty-fifth heaven. It is not only in pleasures, but likewise in labors, that this want of variety must be examined. The labors in har- mony are but one and the same thing with pleasures, since all labor ought to be attractive. Accordingly, the harmo- nians make no distinction between labor and pleasure. A dinner session and a labor session are nothing but two amusements in their eyes. But recreations themselves are tiresome and injurious if you prolong them beyond two hours %dthout interruption. AVhatever enthusiasm may prevail in them, will not sustain itself beyond two hours, according to the laws of the com- posite. It is necessary, therefore, in order to keep up va- riety, and prevent excess and disgust, that the labors should OR BUTTERFLY PASSION. 35 be sufficiently numerous to relieve each other, at the latest, every two hours, and frequently every hour, with agreeable surprises; for there would not be regular enjoyment of the eleventh passion called papillon, if the varieties of pleasure were not at one time gradative, at another improvised. Such is the kind of life that every one leads in harmony. The employment of the da}^ is distributed there in little ses- sions, all well varied according to the rules of the papillon. This kind of life that prevents all excess, all ennui, is one of the means which in harmony will raise the human species to a prodigious vigour. In civilization, the people, exhausted by the want of va- riety, by the monotony and the excess of a same kind of work, employs two days — Sunday and Monday — to refresh itself, and drown itself in wine, to console itself for five daj'^s of industrial punishment. In certain countries, like Sweden, the people only work three days per week, so greatly is it Avearied of the civilizee regime, that has the vice of neither varying labors with the people, nor pleasm'es with the opu- lent class. Accordingly, you see the latter class incessantly give in to excesses, such as festivals of four or five hours' duration, balls lasting through the whole night, and labors still worse, from their interminable sessions devoid of attraction. But the civilizee state is not made for this pleasure; conse- quently the civilizees use it as the camel uses water, whereof it drinks for thirst past and future. These excesses hinge upon the penury of enjoyments. The repast or ball would not be thus prolonged if other pleasures, equally lively, offered after two hours time. One of the principal remedies for excess would be, to secure a fiill development of the papillon. Harmony will have to procure for every man, woman and child a mass of pleasures sufficiently numerous to relieve each other con- stantly. That is to say, that after having partaken in the course of the day of a dozen enjoyments, you may be able to enjoy the next day others in like number, but with variety of D 2 36 THE PAPILLON, contrast and identity, successive or improvised, according to the table given further back — a table to which would have to be added, moreover, conditions of progressive develop- ment, whereof mention Avill be made in the chapters on the focal passion. But to speculate here upon variety alone, which is the object of the eleventh passion, it is clear that, in supposing the sessions of pleasure confined to a dozen per day for the poorest of men, they will have to be relieved by thirds, and to have in reserve at least four new pleasures for the next day, as many for the day after, and a similar vary- ing distributed over the days, the weeks, the months, the years, the lustres, the phases, and the whole course of life. The exercise of the papillon would be hindered, and there would exist no harmony of passion, if the eleventh that re- quires these varieties, had not its full development. Amongst the most boasted enjoyments, there are some that soon become blunt, can only excite enthusiasm once or twice, and must be lost sight of for a long time to re-appear with advantage. Their supply must therefore be countless, if you want to vary them according to the rules of the papillon. Habit renders the most delicate viands insipid to us, and the human species being exposed to be '^used up,^' more or less, in connection with every habitual pleasure, it is not over- rating it to estimate at a third the renewal that the enjoy- ments must receive every day, in order to secure to the papillon a full development, for which purpose everything has been well prepared by God in the mechanism of har- mony. It is not only to human beings, it is to the whole of na- ture that the use of this passion extends. I have observed that the purely material beings are subject to it as well as animate bodies ; thus a field requires to vary its productions, and dislikes to receive, many years in succession, the same kind of seed. The grain, on its side, does not like to be sown in the field that has brought it forth ; it degenerates in it, and requires the alternation of soil. Plants require that you sliould reproduce them alternately from bulbs, from OR BUTTERFLY PASSION. 37 grains, from sets, from grafts, &c. ; they become degenerate if you neglect this precaution of varying. The races of men* and of animals are subject to the same want; they are beau- tified by crossing, and debilitated by keeping to one line. Thus all nature is animated by this passion for varying and papillonism, which is the sovereign vice in the eyes of the philosophers, the friends of black broth and of uni- formity. You must observe carefully that the passion for variety is a want, and not a whim. Every one knows by experience that after having lived some time at a table uni- formly served, the stomach remits and slackens its functions, notwithstanding the salubrity of the viands ; and the day that you pass to a table with different cheer, you are sure to digest more rapidly, though you may eat more. The sto- mach, as well as the heart and the mind of man, experience, like the whole of nature, the want of varying, especially in love matters, so inclined to follow the laws of the papillou, and to desert the conjugal standard. Our ballad writers have sufficiently preached on this head the power of the eleventh passion, and it is meet to cite in this place one of their couplets : — " Je le tien de tous les epoux, Tel est I'efFet du mariage, L'ennui se glisse parmi nous, Au sein du plus heureux menage. " Votre femme a beaucoup d'appas, Celle du voisin n'en a guere ; Mais on veut ce que Ton n'a pas, Et ce qu'on a cesse de plaire." If the philosophers had analysed the passions, and especi- ally the papillon, the cabalist, and the composite, which arc three passions antipathetic to the incoherent household, they would have come to suspect that this tie, which places fami- * It is said that the Scotch and Spanish nobility, which have been in the habit of intermarrying in the same family, have become greatly degenerate ; whereas the Persian magnates have become an improved race, through the intro- duction of Circassian and Georgian slaves in their harems. — Translator. 38 THE PAPILLON, OR BUTTERFLY PASSION. lies in respective isolation, is opposed to the nature of man ; and that civilization, which clashes on all hands with the three distributive passions, is in its whole character the anti- pode of destiny, since it cannot admit the exercise of three passions, whereof the attraction is so powerful, especially that of the composite.* * See a clear summary of the three distributives and of theu- working, iu Fourier's long note, Chap. II. of the Appendix. — Translator. CHAPTER IV. RECAPITULATION OF THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. The reader has probably remarked in their definition^ that each of them conceals germs of all the vices condemned by morality. Let us recapitulate this subject briefly. The twelfth, the composite or dovetailing passion, re- quires that man should disdain to consult reason, and should yield without reserve to the impulsions of enthusiasm and of pleasure, always dangerous in the civilizee state. It requires that he should consider as a call from God the baits that seduce at once the soul and the senses, and stifle the voice of reason. Assuredly it is not in the civilizee order that this passion should be excited ; it would lead infallibly to ruin whosoever should wish to yield himself constantly up to it. Accordingly, it is, as well as the two others, signalized as vice, and not as a spring of social mechanism. The eleventh, the papillon or alternating passion, is equally incompatible with our customs. The most opulent man would be very soon ruined if he pretended to vary his pleasures every hour, and to renew them in the proportion of one-third every day, every week, every month, every year, as happens in harmony. Too many quicksands are already met with in the few pleasures that civilization offers ; accordingly the moralists recommend men to fix themselves to somniferous habits, such as domestic life and the conjugal tie. It is certain that in this civilization, that does not offer to the most powerful prince the means of intriguing and 40 RECAPITULATION OF varying his pleasures during a single day, you would do very wrong to inspire every citizen (bourgeois) or peasant with the mania for varying them at least twelve times per day, and of distributing them by composite or collections of delights, varied by some simple pleasures. This wish of the papillon is as inadmissible as the wishes of the composite in our relations : and it is evident that the impulsions of both can only suit an order of things widely different from civilization. The tenth, cabalist or intriguing passion, is the most inadmissible, though the most admitted of the three. What should we think of a man who were to say, " Here is an assembly of 400 deputies that is about to meet ; we must sow seeds of discord in it, embroil it, subdivide it into a dozen parties by such and such manoeuvres, blow into a flame the fire of the passions, excite so much animosity be- tween the different cabals, that they shall be resolved never to yield an inch of their pretensions.^' Certes, the man who were to give such advice would be, with good reason, treated as an incendiary, as a social pest ; and yet this man would act according to the intention of God, who requires that, in order to direct a passional mass, you should begin by ex- citing general discord, and the subdivision into groups of contrasted opinions. Accordingly this result is that which immediately follows the mass of the Holy Ghost, with which the political assemblies open their proceedings. Their mem- bers go directly on leaving it to organize twenty cabalistic groups ; whence we must infer, either that the Holy Ghost laughs at their invocation, or, if He has responded to it, the spirit of cabal with which He inspires them is in truth the Spirit of God. Nothing is more certain, since without this cabal you could not organize the equilibrium of balanced rivalries, which is the palladium of the passional series. It is evident that the procedure that I have just described — the provocation of discords — cannot be proper in civiliza- tion, and would only tend there to accelerate the burning too soon kindled in deliberating assemblies, where they set out with grimaces of fraternity, in order to quarrel on the morrow. THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. 41 A property common to these three passions is, that they are not special pleasures like Friendship, Love, &c. ; they are only assemblies of several special pleasures. Some cavil- lers would infer from this that they are not passions at all ; it is as if they were to say that the three rays, indigo, green and orange, are not colors, since they are formed of the amalgamation of four others (which is not proved). If it could be made out that the nine material and spi- ritual passions are original passions, and that the three dis- tributives are only connecting passions that ally them, it would be no less true that the three distributives are those that direct all and operate upon the two other classes, like the coachman on the two horses whereof he holds the reins. It will be readily proved that the coachman does not draw the car; must we infer from this that he is useless? His guiding cares are as necessary as the effort of the two quad- rupeds ; you would soon see the horses stray, and pitch over the car and themselves, if their guide ceased to direct them. It is the same with the service of the three distributives. As long as they do not direct the social order, you would create in vain numerous enjoyments ; they could but depreciate themselves, jar together by a vicious distribution that aug- ments poverty in proportion to the germs of riches, and makes some sages doubt if the sciences, the arts and industry are not fatal gifts for the happiness of man. Let us not go astray among these moral diatribes, but let us pursue our subject, which is the union of the three distri- butive passions, their concert in every relation of harmony. This union is visible enough in music by the three modes, major, minor and mixed. Let us give an example of it, drawn from a science more within range of all classes of savans ; I mean literature. It admits the three distributive passions as its mariner's compass in all dramatic fiction; it requires their combined intervention. Let us examine : — 1st. Literature requires the use of the composite or dove- tailing passion ; it demands that the characters depicted should be moved by a double spring. In the tragedy of the Cid,"^ * See Corneille's tragedy of that name. — Tramlalor. 43 KACAPITULATION OF Chimene, witli her love alone, would excite no interest ; but Chimene is obliged to denounce her lover as the murderer of her father : she is divided between love and honor. The con- trast of these two passions raises the interest to the highest pitch ; they form in the Cid a subversive contrasted composite, that brings into play two discordant passions in the same subject. The passions that are in mutual concourse, in harmonic composite, interest us in the same way ; the hero who fights for honor and love pleases us more that he who fights for honor alone or love alone ; whence it is clear that the drama requires the composite. 2ndly. The alternating passion or papillon is, in like man- ner, rigorously demanded in a dramatic work. Variety ought to reign there constantly ; you must crowd in incidents, situ- ations and other springs capable of preventing monotony. Accordingly care is taken to contrive chances of variety by making the characters form contrasts, in order to be able to pass from grave to gay, from serious to severe. The author who were to neglect to observe the laws of the papillon would be as utterly unfortunate as the one who omitted that of the composite. Srdly. The rule is no less obligatory in connection with the cabalist or dissenting passion. If the intrigue were not well knotted and planned; if the catastrophe, that is, the end of the piece, were not impeded by inopportune events (contre temjjsj, rivals to foil ; if the author did not know how to hold the spectators in suspense as to the issue of the cabals ; every one would think that he beheld the monotony of his sweet home, and would no longer find at the theatre a dis- traction from the insipid scenes of domestic life. We require in a dramatic work the combined play of the three distributive passions ; we want there, moreover, the pro- gression of interest and the unity of action, which are attri- butes of the focal passion, whereof I shall speak farther on.* The work only obtains our suffrages inasmuch as it brings these diiferent passions into play. This is a sufficient proof * See Part Ml.— Tr ami a tor. THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. 43 that in gmng them as essential and radical springs of the social movement, I do nothing but conform to universally admitted principles. They direct literature, which is a move- ment of the mind. Now if there is unity of system in nature, it is necessary either that the social mechanism should be coordinate to the same rules, or that literature should be de- clared inept for having adopted them. It has, on the con- trary, given proof of an exquisite discernment in subjecting dramatic authors to the rules that God assigns to social me- chanics. It is very distressing that the philosophers of the moral political class have not had in their systems this justness of principles that literati possess in so high a degree, especially in France, where literature is greatly more severe about the rules of the art than in other countries, addicted to dramatic and romantic monstrosities. Their precept of the three unities (three industrial func- tions), will be scrupulously observed in the mechanism of harmony. As for the present, it is overlooked by the philo- sophers, who nevertheless have some idea of it, for they have sought to establish it by means of the three powers, legisla- tive, executive and judicial. This was dreaming of the words instead of establishing the things. Accordingly their visions of balance and trinity of power have only led to envenom the evil, provoke revolutions and anarchy, ending in military des- potism. The philosophers had a no less laudable inspiration in seeking the theory of the three social unities that are derived from two sources, namely : — The three industrial unities, or *shares proportioned to capitals, labors and talents. The three sexual unities ; or balance of influence between men, women and children. How far people are from this unity in civilization, where, on the one hand, labor and talent, on the other hand, the women and children are counted for nothing ! Political sci- ence has no idea of these unities. Literature, on the contnuy, has the honor of having invented bij instinct the unities of its jurisdiction, or unities of action, of time and of place : that 44 RECAPITULATION OF in one place, in one day, a single deed be brought about : . . . unities that require, as has been just seen, the use of the three distributive passions. It is not, therefore, a new doctrine that I am about to teach ; I am only the echo of the classes that have shed true lights upon the mechanism of nature. The theories of the physical geometers, literati and poets, will be found to accord with the theory of the harmony of the passions. I shall have against me only the disorganizing sciences, that have led the human race to poverty and carnage, whilst promising it the perfecting of perfectibility. Although I have only philosophy to combat, I shall have to reproach the geometricians, natural philosophers, literati and artists for the weakness that they have shewn in not denouncing to the learned world these classes of jugglers, who pretend to govern the passions of the world and know not how to govern their own, and have only known how to lead the friends of science and of truth to poverty, the con- stant reward of the labors of the useful savant. Although I do not yet treat of the passions considered in subversive development, it is seasonable to observe briefly that the three distributives have, like the nine other passions, their subversive development. The four aff^ectives produce subversive groups ; those of false friends, those of false lovers, those of swindler associates, and those of avaricious parents. The three distributives are in like manner subject to the subversive development ; you incessantly meet with it in the civilizee mechanism, where each of the three disguises itself in the following manner ; — 12th. The composite in collision. 11th. The papillon in conflict, collusion, worsening.''^ 10th. The cabalist in divergence. Collision takes place when two antipathic passions make a spectre of union to attain a common end. Thus we see beings unite in marriage and other affairs who have no pas- sional affinity, and whereof the approximation, the bringing t Pejoration (from pejor, worse) is the French word which means deterioration or falling off, or in plain English, making matters worse. — Trannlator. THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. 45 together, is nothing but a subdued disgust. This is what happens with two men, who despise and suspect each other, but who nevertheless associate for the sake of an aflair pro- fitable to both ; a thing seen at every step in trade. Such is the tie of collision, which gives as much slowness and cold- ness to the social movement as the composite does activity and enthusiasm. Conflict or collusion springs from the play of three pas- sions, whereof one enters in to stop the shock of the two first ; thus proprietors and thieves would be in a state of per- manent warfare without the surveillance of the authorities, who keep back the one and protect the other. Conflict, collusion, or worsening draws after it consequently three un- productive actions : — Defensive precautions of the producer. Attempts at aggression by the thief. Interposition of an armed and protective force. Here are three parasite functions, where not one would be wanted if the people were, as in harmony, happy enough not to think of larceny. The whole civilizee mechanism extolled as perfectible, is thus organized in a conflict of three- fold unproductive functions,"^ and after that, people complain of being poor. Need we wonder at it ? Divergence is a play of the passions that arms man against himself, and produces two contradictory actions in him ; of this nature is the vengeance of a Japanese, who plucks out an eye at his neighbor's door to make the law suspect the neigh- bor, and pluck out two from him.f In this revenge the soul persecutes the body ; both are in divergence. Of this nature is likewise the folly of a man who borrows money, and ruins himself to live in splendid style ; he tends at once to luxury and to poverty. Such again is the effect * Conflict only applies to two forces that jar together. There are in this case three functions, whereof one stops the shock of the others ; consequently a more exact name than that of conflict would be desirable ; a name designating these two hostile forces kept back by a third. If such a word exists in the French lan- guage, I do not know it, and I have been obliged to retain the insufiicient term conflict. — Note of Fourier. t See Lettres Edifiantes et Ctirienses, — Translator. 46 RECAPITULATION OF of civilization, that wants to perfect the man, and only ends in corrupting his heart, enervating his strength, and degrad- ing his climates, by the thinning of forests and the stripping of slopes. The examination of these three passions in subversive development, gives occasion to ample details that must be reserved for special sections; our object here is only to prove the existence and the violent pressure of the three distributive passions, the impossibility of developing them usefully in the civilizee and barbarian order, and the distressing pro- perty that our societies have of constantly developing these three passions in a subversive and mischievous mode, that produces collision, conflict and divergence, instead of the three charming passions that I have named, composite, papillon, cabalist ; passions whereof the charm is increased a hundred times by the combined play of all three. But in isolated development, they produce only social and domestic disorder, or the chagrin that springs from the gleam of a pleasure too speedily vanished ; witness the pic- ture given (Chap. I., p. 7) of a company, which, in a well arranged feie, arrives collectively at the composite. I sup- pose that the said company were entirely composed of young people, for old men in a ball think of nothing but plotting in stock-jobbing and the elections, and then about guzzhng at supper; but young people, and especially the women, yield themselves there without measure to the composite, to the double enthusiasm of the senses and of the soul, espe- cially if there are the means of appointments, of making new conquests ; they are drunk with pleasure, and think them- selves transported into a magic world, and repeat to them- selves : " Why does not it always last ? Why, after this elegant ball, this elegant supper, these gallantries, must we return to a kind of hell, into a mercantile counting-house, an office of finance, and why is not life spent in continual fetes ?" " It is," say the moralists, " because after having amused oneself, it is right to work to gain your living." The moralists are wrong ; you must pass your life in flitting from pleasures to pleasures; but they ought to have discovered this THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. 47 order wherein seven-eightlis of the labours are changed into sessions of the composite, and wound up by joyous repasts, which, to the number of five, come to vary opportunely the eight sessions of labor that are commonly furnished by a day in harmony, according to the following table, where the five meals are in italics : — r From 3 to 4^, a.m Session of the Uttle hordes at I the stables. ,, to 5f \st repast, on rising. From 5 to 6^ Sessionofgrandculture, mowing From C|^ to 8 Session of grand culture, vines. From 8 to 8i Breakfast, 2nd repast. From 8|^ to 10^ Session of small culture, under tents in the garden. Interlude. — Refreshment, From lOf to 12f Session of studies or of kitchen. k.t 1 p.m Dinner, 3rd repast (Parcoiirs) .* r From 2^ to 4 p.m Session of workshops, of greeu- I houses, of fish-ponds. From 4^ to 5f Session of forests, sylvans. I At 6 p.m Tea in the forest, 4th repast. From Q\ io 7\ Session of gardening, watering. From 7i to 9, the Exchange. . Session of the plays, ball, con- cert, court of gallantry. i^ At 9 o'clock Supper, 5th repast. The amusements prolonged till 11 o' clock, j- * The following definition of parconrs has been communicated to the trans- lator by Mr. Hugh Doherty, who is the best living authority as regards the sense and scope of Fourier's ideas ; and who, we are glad to hear, is preparing a valuable scientific work on " Series." " Parcoitrs is a word used by Fourier to indicate the different degrees of accord in the distributive passions, which he says have no special scale of elements, spiritual and material, like the four affections. Their degrees of intensity and harmony are therefore elevated, according to Fourier, by a rapid succession of different shades of pleasure and variety, grafted on the principal pleasure of a special function or occurrence, as a multifarious display of variations in music are grafted on a special melody of any sort." The reader will also find a definition of parcours by Fourier at p. 180, Vol. I. of the Fausse Industrie. — Translator. t The following page I'emains blank ; it was no doubt intended to contain another table to replace the foregoing one, which is blotted out. — Note of French Editors. 48 RECAPITULATION OF This day, delineated as a specimen, is varied in a thousand ways on other days, and according to the seasons or the temperature. I have placed in this table sessions of kitchen, culture, and manufacture, because every man brought up in harmony is drawn cabalistically to these different labors (as will be seen in the treatise on the series), and finds in the industrial functions compound enjoyments or developments of the passion called composite. The day of a rich man may be much more varied. He may extend it to twenty-four sessions, with parcours,* a kind of pleasure whereof I have not yet treated. A poor man has no other inconvenience than a small number of sessions in simple pleasure, or at a job like the post or the telegraph, which have nothing agreeable about them ; but the sessions being short, there remain to him always a good number of composites for every day, and more than any of our sybarites can taste. Besides, the fatigues of the poor are in no manner com- parable to those that he endures at present. If he is en- gaged with a posting journey as courier or postillion, the courier has nothing else to do than to go in a good carriage to the following station ; the couriers relieve each other at every post, and their carriage, furnished with cases, distin- guishes so well the packets of each relay, that you cannot make a mistake, and it is not necessary that a responsible man should accompany the dispatches during a hundred consecutive leagues. If it be necessary to drive as postillion, the horses are put to in a closed and warmed porch ; the postillion is wrapped up in a good fur dress, in case of cold ; if it rains he has a cloak and a large hat of waterproof felt. After this, posting is so much the less a task to him, since he finds, at the fol- lowing station, friends with whom he will enjoy himself for one or two hours, whilst the horses are baiting. And what is meant in harmony by enjoying himself? It is to work, since labor is attractive. Hylas, of the phalanx of Tibur, has conducted a post- * See Part III,, Chap. I. — Translator. THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS. 49 chaise to the phalanx of Lucretile. He arrives at ten o'clock in the morning at the caravanserai^ of Lucretile. His first care is to read the industrial bulletin, or the order of the clay — the programme, a detail settled at the exchange on the preceding evening respecting the sessions of the groups. He sees there, marked for half-past ten, a table of sixty sessions of groups. Amongst their number he distinguishes three that are co-passional with him, his associates in cabal. These are the groups of the green-house, of tulips and of green bury pears. Hylas loves these three cultures ; he is in active cabal in favor of each of them, and, not knowing which to choose, he resolves to visit them in parcours, or circuit, that is to say, to pass half an hour with each of the three groups ; he delivers over his horses to the pages of the station who attend to the caravanserai, then he betakes himself to the group of the tulipists at a quarter past ten. It is the mo- ment of the sub-breakfast or interlude ; he finds the group of the tulipists collected in their kiosk or marquee, the inter- lude served up, — the ices, the orangeades, the sparkling wines, the confectionary, sweetmeats and trifles of gastrosophic in- terlude. He shares in these light amusements, and labors afterwards in the group of the tulipists, entertaining himself with the intrigues and rivaMes of the neighborhood. After which he goes to join the groups of the green- house and of greenbury pears, which he traverses from half-hour to half- hour, and at half-past eleven he returns, with his horses well refreshed, to the phalanx of Tibm*, where he will arrive at the dinner hour, and place himself at the feast that he will have chosen the night before at the negociations on 'Change. He will dine with the tulipists of Tibur, who have on that day a corporation dinner ; he will take the place of transition at the top of the table, because he wishes on that day to dine in circuit (en parcours) , and to see likewise the heads of the * " The other wing must contain the caravanserai, with its ball-rooms and those for the relations with strangers, in order that they may not encumber the centre of the palace, nor cramp the domestic relations of the phalanx." — See in Chap. V. p. 458, Vol. III. of the Treatise on Unity, the Distribution of the Phalanstery. — Translator. VOL. II. E 50 RECAPITULATION, ETC. green-house and of the green bury pear culture, and many more besides, and to communicate to them during the repast many intrigues and cabalistic bits of news which he has heard in his journey to Tibur. " It is all very well," says the reader ; " but who is there to pay for this cheer of Apicius; all these dainties of ice, orangeades and sparkling wines, lavished on the laborers; these feasts of all the groups, recurring every two hours?" A good question ! It is attraction that pays. It furnishes so many pro- ductions that you are only puzzled how to consume, and that after having sold a heavy mass of produce, you still keep back far too much, and in such quantity, that you are frequently obliged to throw it into the gutters, and even into the sea, after having handed over a good portion of it to commerce. " We admit this superfluity," I shall be told ; " but to transform it into eatables, manufactured goods, ices, sweet- meats, &c., labor is required, and who is there that will pay the laborers?" A still more absurd question. Attraction answers everything ; it draws them on to produce, and will draw them to manufacture ; the only remaining embarrass- ment will be how to consume and how to excite a vigorous appetite in all human beings, that they may be able to con- sume a great deal at the five meals and in the interludes. Now this appetite wiU spring from the mechanism of har- mony, which, habituating from infancy all men and women to an active and varied life in the hourly changes of the workshop or of culture, will excite in all an appetite sufficient to equal the consumption of the immensity of food that the globe will produce in this new order. If such is the material well-being reserved for us in har- mony ; if it is intended to provide for us a similar well-being attaching to the aff'ective passions or pleasures of the soul ; and if an easy experiment with five hundred villagers suffices to spread this benefit over the whole human race ; how great should be our zeal to study well the theory of such an order. Let us therefore redouble in courage to finish this volume of principles, and pass to the synthesis, where we shall see the demonstration of these brilliant affirmations. CHAPTER V. OF THE SUBVERSIVE PLAY OF THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. I HAVE given a very abridged defimtioii of the three distri- butives in subversive or civilizee play. It is proper to insist upon so important a subject^ and since the readers do not know the three passions according to the development that they will take in harmony^ it is desirable to dispose them to this study by an exact analysis of their actual vent. I shall greatly abridge this subjectj and I only wish to give some developments to the preceding definition on the three pas- sions called cabalist, papillon, and composite, and on the disorders that they cause in the actual state, where they only operate subversely by counter-march or caterpillar de- velopment. Let us not lose sight of the problem that ought to serve as compass to all our researches. The question is, to find the secret of the passional series that existed in the first ages of the world,* and became disorganized for want of the great agricultural and manufacturing industry necessary for the support of the series in the case of a numerous population. Now that this industry ha»s been created by the protracted efforts of the fixed sciences, all oiu' attention is due to seeking for the process of social harmony; and since it is happily discovered ; since this secret of the formation of the passional series applied to the grand system of industry has been found ; * See the description of Eden, or the primitive society, vol. ii., p. 806, of the Fansse Industrie. — Translator. E 2 52 SUBVERSIVE PLAY OF let us study with care the three passions on which reposes the art of forming the series. The nine other passions^ the five sensuals and the four affectives, are sufficiently known by all the world. Every one is in a situation to reason upon the pleasures of the five senses and of the four groups ; but the most erudite civilizees are very new on the analogy of the three distributive passions, which must be well known in order to study harmony. Before considering their properties in the societary state, in passional series, they must be studied in an insocietary or civilizee and barbarian regime, in non-associated families. We are about to observe this mischievous development in the civilizee state, where the three distributives have much more influence than in the barbarian state. lOtli. The cabalist, or dissenting passion, named diverging, with regard to the influence it exerts in a non-societary state. In the same proportion that it is valuable in harmony, where it excites nothing but emulation, progress and industry, hon- orable proceedings between competitors ; so is it injurious in ciAdlization, where competition is depressive and detractive. Witness the decennial prizes of 1811, the competitors for which reviled each other to such an extent that the Govern- ment did not know to whom to adjudge the prizes, and was obliged to regard the suffrages of the Institute as a cabalistic iniquity. Thus the cabalist in civilizee development excites disunion only, and leads to vexations. This effect is hardly ever seen in agricultural labors, because the cultivators are neither acquainted with association nor with competitive ri- valry ; they are free from the cabalist in all that relates to culture, and have no other stimulant than the want of sub- sistence ; they sell bad corn and bad wines as well as good, gather all fruits when green, let everything deteriorate. Ac- cordingly we see them very restive against useful innovations, and very obstinate in the methods that are acknowledged to be defective. There is no other resource left for us but to confound them by an experimental success obtained beneath their eyes, and several times repeated ; for these dolts of habit only surrender at the last extremity : they are mere THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. 53 idiots (cretins) with regard to emulation, and if they carry on the passion called cabalist, it is only in a vexatious fornij in the intrigues of jealousy and mischief. The manufacturers are more inclined to the industrial cabal ; they seek mutually to crush each other, especially in national rivalries. This mania is still stronger among com- mercial men and stock-jobbers, whose favorite passion is to crush the opposite party; but this jealousy is not the effect of emulative competition, which stimulates several varieties of industry in order to raise them all to perfection, and to enrich their respective groups in consequence of balanced rivalries. The phrensy of crushing is far worse in administrative cabal, where parties frequently knock off the heads of their opponents without there resulting from these atrocious strug- gles any good for the mass, which is, on the contrary, robbed and bruised in all directions by the feuds of ofl&ce-holders and place-hunters. Thus the cabalist is in the ci^dlizee and barbarian order nothing but a germ of disorganization. The reader will see that it is the same with the two other distributive passions, which, in the existing state, can only breed disorder. 11th. The papillon, or passion for alternation. I have called it conflict relatively to the part it plays in ci^alization. There is no passion less applicable to the ci^'ilizee system ; and first, as regards the functions of industry, it requires short sessions, their continued variety every hour, or at most, every two hours. Civilization cannot admit these industrial relays, nor give to each man twenty or thirty diff'erent pro- fessions ; on the contrary, it exhausts the workman by a sin- gle labor, and in cotton mills we see children obliged to work fifteen hours per day, deprived of healthy and refresh- ing air. Nature has destined us for an exercise varied without excess ; she has contrived for us in the functions of the series this perpetual variety whereon health and dexterity depend. The civilizee order confines us to an entirely opposite system. 54 SUBVERSIVE PLAY OF and hence arises material contradiction with the papillon, the influence of which only tends to push us into evil, since it makes us deviate from the monotony and uniformity that civilization would require. It would be proper, in this society, that the child should inherit his father's tastes, that the wife should faithfully observe the conjugal laws ; in short it would be necessary that, from families up to nations, every one should secure himself against the spirit of inconstancy and of hazarded innovation. I make use of the word hazarded because the risks of innovation do not extend to those which are, like vaccination, susceptible of restricted experiment and of experimental demonstration, as the theory of passional harmony, which may be tried on a village of five hundred souls. I only apply the word hazarded to the sophistic novelties of sacred equahty, sweet fraternity, &c., whereof the authors always wish to extend the experiment to whole empires. In the present state of things, the papillon, or mania for variety, is prejudicial to us in every direction. The in- constancy of a son slackens and endangers the labors begun by his father ; it ruins families as well as empires, where the whim of a minister may paralyze the most useful labors, upset the best political systems. Innovation is fatal to us, even where it puts forth plausible pretexts of industrial uti- lity. A new fashion is preached up as a good for trade, and the progress of industry ; and this very fashion, the following year, will reduce to misery twenty thousand workmen who lived by the former fashion. Some new comers will raise their fortune on the ruins of the old hands. What will be gained as a result ? Floods of unhappy creatiires, economical illusions, from which nothing but disorder is seen to spring. Thus the papillon, or alternating passion, pledge of all good things in harmony, is, in the actual order, only a germ of disorganization. 12th. The composite, or interwea^dng passion, which I have named collision, as regards its present uses, is the most dangerous of the passions in the ci^dlizee order, by THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. 55 raising illusion and enthusiasm to a pitch that leaves no room for reason ; it is almost always an act of madness. For example^ David is in love with Bathsheba; he knows that by success in winning her he will fall into two quick- sands forbidden by the civil and religious laws : the first is that of exposing himself to the everlasting flames by an adultery, the second is that of violating by this adultery the most sacred bond of civilization. Yet the composite, or sense-and-soul illusion of love, will draw David to stain him- self with this double sin, cause scandal, and incur damna- tion. All the composites have this influence contrary to our laws and customs ; they carry man away in spite of reason and of wisdom. Whence it follows that civilization is very antipathic to the nature of man, since it is organized in such a manner as to make this passion, the most powerful in man, give birth to a storm of scourges, to which we can only oppose reason void of power against the composite, the cabalist and the papillon. What could be the aim of the Divinity in subjecting us to three passions so contrary to general good order ? God must certainly have reserved them for uses very different from the civilizee mechanism. I have said that they are destined to direct the passional series and the mechanism of unity ; apart from this order, they must become the germs of social duphcity. They are three demons leagued to sow discord amongst the others, which they ought to harmonize. To judge soundly of the distributive passions, they must always be considered in conformity with our pecuniary inte- rests, in conformity with the means of riches they procure. It has been seen, from the beginning of this work, that our souls tend to three aims, — to luxiuy, to groups, to series."^ Riches are the first aim to which the Creator and Distributor of attraction purges us. We must, therefore, in order to adhere to the intentions of our Maker, develop in ourselves above all things the love of riches, reconciled with the deve- lopment of the three distributives. I do not recommend the love of riches ; in isolation it * See Part I., p. 6, in the First Volume. — Translator. 56 SUBVERSIVE PLAY OF would be nothing but a stimulus to crime ; I only laud the thirst for riches inasmuch as it will bring into play the powers given by God, and that it will cause riches to spring from a complete development of the three distributives; a development that only takes place in the state of passional series, and which, apart from that state, tends only to im- poverish us, and to engender hypocritical bonds or shams of groups. 10th. The divergence, or subversive cabalist, only gives birth to unproductive struggles. 11th. The conflict, or subversive papillon, produces only pernicious changes. 12th. The collision, or subversive composite, creates only hypocritical groups. Divergence, or the subversive cabal, is of three genera, — simple, mixed, and compound. It is simple when there is efibrt, struggle and success to deceive and rob ; as when an intrigant succeeds in inveigling a testator, and in fi'ustrating legitimate heirs who have no dis- qualification. Multitudes of these direct cabals are seen in civilization. Of this nature is the trick of a group of stock- jobbers, who entirely forestall a particular sort of merchan- dize, and thereby rob the whole mass of the nation ; these plots are the direct divergence. It is mioced when it brings together two rivals in favor of a third ; the two suitors, fearing that they will not succeed, favor a third to foil each other reciprocally. This plot is fre- quently seen in elections. It is compound when it draws all classes reciprocally to ruin each other. The savans under Buonaparte lost the thirty-five decennial prizes by this mode of abasing each other ; they went to loggerheads to prove that none of the competitors deserved the prizes ; it was found necessary, therefore, not to award any prize at all. Thus compound divergence frequently ends in defoiling the second- ary champions as well as the principals. There are several degrees in this effect of the passion : I have just mentioned two ; the one giving a favor to a third, the other excluding all the competitors by reciprocal ill-will. THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. 57 The divergence is bi-compound when it prepares a perma- nent double evil to come, by a present double evil. As when a Japanese plucks out one of his own eyes at the door of his enemy, to make the law punish that enemy by plucking out two ; or when a merchant who undersells ruins himself to injure his neighbor, and draw him to a similar loss through competition ; there will remain to the Japanese and to the merchant the feeling of a real and distressing loss. The spiteful pleasure of having annoyed his enemy will not prevent the one from regretting his eye and the other his money, nor will it prevent these two privations from having been introduced by an epoch of respective suffering : total, four sufferings, whereof two present to prepare two future ones. It is an effect worthy of the ci\41izee perfectibilities. The divergence is invet'se when it leagues the extremes against the mean terms ; such is the mechanism that unites the prince and the soldier to keep down the laboring mass. Though the soldier, excessively poor, has none of the interests and profits that accrue from this intervention to the chief authorities, yet political parties are seen in all directions forming these approximations of extremes against the mean terms ; an effect that presents two unproductive classes united to force a third to labor and produce. These two developments of divergence or subversive cabal are opposed to those of the emulative cabal, which can only be known when I shall have described the mechanism of the passional series ; till then let us confine ourselves to observing that all in the actual cabals is unproductive ; for they only tend to bring into play either corporations that plunder the mass, as the stock-jobbers do, or corporations like the army, who, while forcing the mass to production, are themselves unproductive, for the soldier produces nothing. It follows from this, that the civilizee cabal, in its three springs, direct, mixed and inverse, is opposed to the first aim of attraction, which is riches. An order of things is wanted where every cabal would be productive, or concur in aiding production, and enriching its sectaries as well as its rivals by industry directly and personally exercised. The civilizee cabals 58 SUBVERSIVE PLAY Ol' all run counter to this aim ; they are consequently effects of divergence or subversive cabalist. Let us pass to the two other passions^ the eleventh and twelfth, 11th, The worsening or subversive papillon (conflict of worsening) is a disguising of the productive papillon. It has different varieties, and may be defined, as regards the actual order, a restlessness that impels us to seek happiness in a doubtful chance, or one inferior to that which it abandons. Hence spring unproductive connivances. Thieves, who might derive a living from industry, tire of it, and take to tliieving ; a league of two powers is required to resist them, — a very unproductive league : for the proprietor, who incurs expenses to lock up his wealth and barricade himself in, pro- duces nothing real ; the gendarmerie, whose interference he requires, is no more productive than himself, and the robber who causes all these disorders is moreover very unproductive. From the moment when the latter throws up industry to give himself to thieving, all three are in unproductive collusion ; for all three carry on a useless struggle, and abandon the chance of productive labor for the unproductive chances of robbery and repression. This is a compound collusion, in which three classes of unproductive agents enter. This mania for change produces the same disorder that springs from the parties of agitators mentioned farther back. There is simple pej oration in the accord of two individuals against industry. Suppose a woman to leave her home and her husband to live with a seducer, and dissipate her fortune ; here are two individuals in unproductive collusion against a third — the husband, who remains occupied in looking after the patrimony. The pej oration is collective when the passion operates on masses, as for instance when a nation changes fashion in dress, and ruins one branch of its manufactures, a portion of itself. Such is also the effect of colonial emigration, which draws off to a distance a mass of colonists to cause them to perish miserably where they thought to find prosperity. Thus under Louis XV. died 10,000 French colonists, imprudently trans- ported to Guyana. THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. 59 All tliese effects of papillon^ as well individual as col- lective, are more or less fatal in civilization. It is very seldom that any good is obtained from them. Hence it comes that innovation is generally proscrilDed by men of sound under- standing, and that the papillon, in civilizee uses, may be named the worsening passion, as the cabalist may be named amongst us the perturbator, placing in divergence the parties on whom it operates ; in short it may be said, save some rare exceptions, confirming the rule, that manias for innovation and change hardly ever lead to anything but e\al, whilst every cabalistic plot commonly ends in causing troubles always pre- judicial to general riches. Here then we have two of the distributive passions that only develop themselves with us in a mischievous direction. Let us pass to the third. 12th. The subversive composite, that I have called colli- sion or misalliance, is a league of heterogeneous passions that produces false groups, whereof the tie is an efTect of egoism, and not of reciprocal aflPection. Of this nature is the union of two partners in trade, who despise each other on account of their cheating and well-known misdeeds. These groups, that may be called misallied, or wedded by \dle motives without any friendship, are united by two con- tradictory springs, for the partners in question despise each other, though uniting from interest. It is an eifect contrary to that of the harmonic composite, where the union is founded on the development of two noble and reciprocal passions : such is the tie of two friends sympathetic in character, asso- ciated for the sake of a branch of industry that pleases both of them. In general, and save a few exceptions, the civilizee groups in industry, in marriage, in political affairs, are only passional misalliances, disgraceful to those who contract them. For example, a police inspector requires spies ; he cannot find them among honorable men ; he is therefore obliged to en- trust this function to blighted characters : it is true he does not treat with them personally ; he directs them through the agency of intermediaries. He is no less their associate in 60 SUBVERSIVE PLAY OE operations; and the inferior officers^ who are men aspiring to notoriety^ must feel themselves mortified to treat with in- formers, provoke them to perfidies, and pay them in propor- tion to their infamy. There is in these leagues a play of contradictory springs, which place moreover the individual in schism with himself; for the inspector of police is obliged to select as co-operators people whom he most despises, and whom he would shun if he followed his inclination. Interest and honor are in con- flict here ; if honor yields on the one hand by vile alliances, it gains on the other by the relief of eminent functions : the mind is tossed backwards and forwards between these two springs, which push it in opposite directions, and keep it in a state of contradiction with itself. These two springs, contrary and yet associated, constitute the false composite, that I shall name the collision or the misallying composite. In this result, one of the two passions is passive, and checks itself to suffer the other to act ; a result differing from that where one passion swallows up another : here the weakest is not eaten up, but simply sent to sleep. The false composite can therefore bear the names of col- lision and misallying, associating two antipathies ; it is homo- geneous if the vice of the act is atoned for by the good of the result, as when a miser or economical person deprives himself of present enjoyments to procure for himself future well-being, or when a pious man restricts himself to fasts and austerities to secm'e his salvation. These privations, instead of leaving him a permanent regret, lead him to an enjoyment. The miser at the end of the year derives more contentment from the money saved than he would from the past pleasure ; the devotee, at the end of Lent, derives more satisfaction from his austerities and chances of salvation than he would from the memory of some breakfasts on Manx capons, for the sake of which one must fry in purgatory. Both have attained their aim, since a past privation becomes, on summing up accounts, a real pleasure. It is nevertheless a vicious effect, a state of passional schisxn with oneself, to gain a point by suffering; it is the THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. 61 opposite of the true composite, that ought to lead us to future happiness by two present pleasures. Such is the action of a poor man, who, to seciu'e himself a happy future, mari'ies a beautiful and rich woman, of whom he is enamored. Thus the true or harmonic composite leads us to future good by two present pleasures ; the false or subversive com- posite leads us to future good by present evil counterbalanc- ing the perspective of the good to come. It is the homogeneous mode ; but there is heterogeneous misalliance when privation or suffering is only followed by a vicious effect, as the lot of a merchant or an artizan who ruins himself after having employed whole years painfully in labors and privations. He prepares the evil to come by the past e\dl, and finds in the end only a double sorrow ; the memory of superfluous toils and the suffering of actual privations. These little analyses might be multiplied ad infimtum; I have drawn up a few tables of them that I suppress. The social functions are everywhere more or less subject to these mis- alliances, divergences and worsenings, from the peasant lean- ing on his spade and dreaming of the fortune of the millionaire who drives by in his coach, to the young gu^l affecting to recite paternosters at church, and thinking of the youth who ogles her. Everywhere civilization presents contradictory effects in the play of the passions, and these effects are refer- able to one of the three distributives. One particular that claims our attention in this discussion, is to distinguish the three distributives amidst the play of the nine others which they direct. A grey beard marries a young gii'l whom he enriches, a marquis marries a citizen's daughter who pays his debts : doubtless there are in these two ties, effects of love on one side and of ambition on the other ; but we must, moreover, analyze in these cases effects of distributive passions. For example, we have here a misalliance or collection of contra- dictory motives, whence springs a subversive composite. Very eccentric effects of this are seen in political affairs, as in the case when the Mussulmans besieged Ancona, on behalf of the Pope, of whom they certainly are not the friends ; and when 62 SUBVERSIVE PLAY OF the Pope, on his side, formed an alliance with these fanatics, who give the name of Christian dog to every man believing in redemption by the blood of Jesus Christ. All these mis- alliances or passional collisions direct the springs in an oppo- site sense and make us contemptible in our own eyes, whereas the true composite, serving at once the body and the soul, makes them join issue in motives and enjoyment. It is the same with the two other distributive passions, whereof the disguise is so complete in civilization, that no reader, before he has read the theory of the passional series, will be able to believe that there exists a method of developing combinedly these three passions, insatiable of pleasures and intrigues, and of finding the pledge of the harmony of the nine others in their combined development. ABRIDGED SKETCH OF THE PASSIONAL CONFLICTS. If you wish to appreciate correctly the absurdity of civih- zation and become convinced that it cannot square with the ultimate views of a just and good Grod, you must collect and compare the numerous varieties of practical absurdities. Such are the scales of the duplicities of action (prolegomena); the series of absurdities into which God would fall if he em- ployed any other agent than attraction, proscribed in the civilizee state ; the gamuts of the subversive development of the groups, such as that given in connection with ambition ; finally, the numerous pictures scattered through the course of the work, and which prove irresistibly the incompatibility of the civilizee and barbarian state with the intentions of God. Here follows a little sketch that may form a supplement to those previously indicated ; we are engaged about the pas- sional conflicts, from which men will be able to infer that, if Beelzebub governed the world, he could not invent a mecha- nism more completely opposed to the wishes of the passions, and their unity which ought to be the aim of God. Let us lay down the proposition. The three distributives having for their office to maintain the soul and body in equi- librium by a concert of the five sensitive passions with the four afiectives, by a mechanism that places the assurance of THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. 63 future well-being in the enjoyment of the present good, every state of things that creates discord between soul and body in full health, deranges the mechanism of the three distribu- tives, and places man in contradiction with his destiny. Let us analyze these discords of the soul and of the body ; they furnish four genera and a pivotal distinction. SIMPLE MATERIAL SHOCKS. A. 1st. Of the body in present enjoyment for the future ill of the body. 2nd. Of the body in present privation for the future good of the body. 3rd. Of the body in present privation for the future ill of the body. SIMPLE ANIMIC SHOCKS. A. 1st. Of the soul in present enjoyment for the future ill of the soul. 2nd. Of the soul in present privation for the future ill of the soul. 3rd. Of the soul in present privation for the future good of the soul. MIXED SHOCKS. B. 1st. Of the body in present enjoyment for the future ill of the soul. 2nd, Of the soul in present enjoyment for the future ill of the body. 3rd. Of the body in present privation for the future ill of the soul. 4th. Of the soul in present privation for the future ill of the body. 5th. Of the body in present privation for the future good of the soul. 6th. Of the soul in present privation for the future good of the body. COMPOUND SHOCKS. C. 1st. Body in present enjoyment for the future ill of body and soul. 2nd. Soul in present enjoyment for the future ill of body and soul. 3rd. Body in present privation for the future good of body and soul. 4th. Soul in present privation for the future ill of body and soul. BI-COMPOUND SHOCKS. D. 1st. Body and soul in present enjoyment for the future ill of the body. 2nd. Body and soul in present enjoyment for the future ill of the soul. 3rd. Body and soul in present enjoyment for the future good of the body. 4th. Body and soul in present enjoyment for the future good of the soul. [For the future good of the body, 5th, 6th. Body and soul in present privationj ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^f the soul. [For the future iU of the body, for 7th, 8th. Body and soul in present privation ^ ^j^^ ^^^^^^ j^ ^f ^1^^ 30ul. HYPER-COMPOUND SHOCKS. (Body and soul in present enjoyment for the future ill of the body and the soul. I Body and soul in present privation for the future good of the body and the soul. ^ Body and soul in present privation for the future ill of the body and the soul. 64 SUBVERSIVE PLAY OF Of these diflerent shocks, amounting to twenty-seven, it suf- fices to define the three last ; they are the most complicated, and whosoever understands them will understand all the others. Body and soul in present enjoyment for the future ill of the body and the soul. Suppose that a man, led astray by love, yields himself up to a woman infected by syphilis, this act prepares for him bodily pain and sorrow of mind for ha\ing momentarily satis- fied the body and the soul, which are thus conspiring against themselves. Body and soul in present privation for the future good of the body and the soul. Suppose that a miser deprives himself of sensual and affec- tive pleasures, of good cheer, of fiiendly society, to heap up a fund destined for the support of his old age, he will have baulked body and soul during thirty years to arrive, in his old age, at material and spiritual enjoyments ; he will have no less on that account employed the major part of his life in baulking the body and the soul to satisfy them very slightly at the age when they are least susceptible of pleasure. Body and soul in present privation for the future ill of the body and the soul. This miser, after having heaped up during his whole youth, may, after all, be plundered by an invasion, a revolu- tionary movement, and even by a fire that will burn the house in which he has invested the whole of his savings; once stript, he will fall into contempt so much the greater as he will not have contrived to make any friends in the time of his prosperity; for misers and hoarders have only apparent friends, fishers for legacies, who are not friends. After this definition of the three pivotal shocks, it is not necessary to define the twenty-four shocks inferior in degree ; every one can supply my place on this point ; for example, if a man eats to excess, it is a shock of the body against the body and the soul, for he prepares for the morrow the mate- rial suffering of indigestion and the spiritual suffering of regret. It is consequently the first of the four shocks indi- cated by the letter C. THE THREE DISTRIBUTIVES. 65 When we proceed to a regular analysis of civilization and barbarism, we shall find all these species of conflicts in collective actions as v/ell as in individual action; it is only as an exception that you may discover certain cases and func- tions in the present social order exempt from one or other of these conflicts. Now, I have said it twenty times, and shall repeat it again, that the exception of one-eighth confirms the rule. For example, in our labors, there certainly exist some agreeable functions, such as the direction exercised by a rich man who sees all prosper in his home ; but seven-eighths of the labors of life, especially those of all who work for wages, are a permanent punishment, a perpetual shock of the soul against the body, which it forces by reflection and the fear of famine to carry on toilsome functions. In following the dogmas of religion, there would be con- flict of the body with the soul even in the pleasures that do not injure the health ; for two lovers who satisfy their pas- sion, work at their eternal damnation ; here are in this act the body and the soul conspiring for the destruction of the soul (D. bi-compound shock) ; and if the Christian* eats a minnow on Friday, which is by no means hurtful to the good of the body and of the soul, he lays up for himself moreover the punishment of the soul in the flames of purgatory. Thus, we cannot take a step without falling into one of the twenty-four conflicts whereof I have just drawn the pic- ture. f If we deduct the religious exaggerations, the caul- drons wherein those are plunged who eat a lark on Friday, and others guilty of similar atrocities ; there remains still in reference to the mass of our actions more than seven-eighths of real conflict coming under the category of those that com- pose the above table. Nevertheless, we are assured that God is the supreme mechanician. I subscribe to this opinion; but how admit that the most learned of mechanicians should take pleasure * The remark applies of course to Catholic countries exclusively. — Translator. t It contains properly twenty-seven, but the foci are not reckoned in move- ment. — Note of Fourier. VOL II. F 6G SUBVERSIVE PLAY OF in this civilizee order^ in which the mechanical conflicts are so numerous, so ridiculous, that the most paltry workman would blush to be their author ? A perfect mechanism is that in which all the forces and levers lend support to each other. Now, in civilization, we see the primordial springs of social life, the body and the soul, jar against each other in all directions by the twenty-seven conflicts just described ; it is nevertheless very easy to orga- nize a like number of combinations opposed to these conflicts. I have mentioned one ; it is the case when a poor man mar- ries a rich and beautiful woman of whom he is enamored, and thus secures the future ivell-being of the body and of the soul by the present well-being of the body and of the soul. Here is the most complicated of the beneficial combinations ; it is evidently possible since we see frequent examples of it. The others, less complicated in motive springs, are so much the more possible ; this granted, a system of social harmony coming from God, coming from the Supreme mechanician, ought to give as results combinations opposite to the twenty- four conflicts and the t>dia. — Translator. f See in the Fansse Industrie, La Cite dc Satan and La Cite de Dieu ; vol. i., p. IGO. — Translator. THE SUBVERSIVE GAMUT. 73 well as white bread and the sight of chateaux. These scieu- tific subtleties are only tricks that tend to excuse the disor- ders wherefrom science despairs of delivering us. All is linked together in the system of nature. If we do not know how to create the beautiful in a sensual system, we shall not be able to establish it any better in a social system. Now what have we done in the sensual system ? We have only succeeded in organizing a universal discord, or caco- phony, embellishing the habitation of the rich without doing anything for the poor, whose dwellings, twenty times more numerous, would be clean and ornamented as early as the sixth period (guaranteeisra), that replaces by regular con- structions our villages furnished with piled-up cabins and infectious pools, our towns encumbered with disgusting ruins, like those of Rouen, Troyes, Angers, Poictiers, &c. Our philosophers have taught us that morality obliges us to view with complacency these civilizee nastinesses ; they have thus consecrated depravation in the visual system, the perfectioning of which is one of the conditions of guarantee- ism. Philosophy has depraved in like manner the other senses; the reader will be convinced of this in the fifth volume. Let us confine ourselves, on this point, to the sub- ject of this chapter, which is to establish an exact nomen- clature in connection with the twelve subversive passions. We must, according to the modern chemists, adopt re- gular and rhyming terminations, as well in the harmonic order as in the subversive order. Suppose that we call the perfection of the five senses sighthood fvisuismej, earhood (oreillismej , smellhood (odeur- ismej, tastehood (goutismej, and touchhood (tactismej, we shall then have to give another termination to the five sub- versive passions that produce the depravation of the senses. If we name the taste for regular prospects sighthood, we shall have to name the taste for ridiculous prospects, such as the filth of our civilizee towns and countries, sightism (visii- dtre). An eye that takes pleasure in the sight of these is a depraved eye ; the same thing is the case with the other senses, since every thing is bound together in the passional 74 NOMENCLATURE OV order, and each of the senses is depraved if it takes pleasure in the civilizee poverties and filth. We can therefore fix upon the terminations hood and ism to designate the harmonic and subversive development of the passions ; the first (hood) will indicate the twelve passions in noble and harmonic development ; the second (ism) will indicate the passions in ignoble and subversive development. Conformably to this nomenclature, whereof I shall treat more amply in a special chapter, we shall call visuists the people inclined, like the harmouians, to refine all that relates to the sense of vision, to establish the perfection of sight- hood in a general system ; next we shall name our civilizee and barbarian vandals visuards, — men who experience no kind of disgust on seeing the filthy habitations of the civilizees and the kennelled families, with which these ruins are peopled. We shall call, in the next place, oreillarde and oreillards, earists, this civilizee population that only takes pleasure in dissonances of every description, from coarse songs and bad accents to the no less discordant songs of the French of more than one class. Their bad taste in this case shall be desig- nated by the name of earism foreillardismj . To relate more exactly the motive of this nomenclature, we may observe that every language has injurious endings, that are appropriate to coarse or mischievous tastes. Let us take as our example one of the senses — hearing ; how desig- nate the mania of certain folks, who like to hear such grat- ing sounds as distress the very dogs ? We have in French an expression that designates these ill-favored people ; a horse is called large eared foreillardj when his ears are too long, and worthy of an ass. You may in like manner call thick-eared those who, like the French, take pleasure in hearing bad music, singers without tune or measure, instru- ments differing by a rest in time or half a tone in tune, as they do commonly in the most distinguished French bands. This defective use of the sense of hearing may be called : — DuU-earism as to the efi'ect ; DuU-earish as to the passion ; Dull-ears as to the individuals. THE SUBVERSIVE GAMUT. 75 You may in like manner apply the names unsightism, unsightly and unsightish, to the acts that denote the absence of visual refinement, to the individuals who, like the French, love to see a partition-wall opposite their windows ; to see, in their proud cities, a populace in rags ; to see in their coun- try districts of Picardy and Bresse huts of savages ; in their Champaign, Limousin and Breton landscapes sterile sand hills flandesj ; in their Proven5al and Languedoc landscapes mountains made hideous by grubbing up the woods. A nation that views with complacency these hideous prospects is au unsightish nation ; the men who have bad taste enough to call such a country La belle France, the abode of the per- fectibilization of perfectilizantism, are evidently guilty of unsightism, or the subversive development of the sense of vision, the mania of taking pleasure in the sight of hideous objects. They deserve the epithet of noseards, and the charge of noseardy, when you hear them preach up the charms of their foetid places, their crowded villages, where the thoroughfare is blocked up by a heap of dung, and where the air is putri- fied by stagnant pools and mud ; their dirty streets in the town of Provence, begrimed with an eternal crust of foecal matter, and their stinking dwellings in the large towns, as in Lyons and in Rouen, where you are obliged to hold your nose in August to guard against the nauseating steams, and take to running in passing through the streets ; nay, even in the public walks, beside which is located, as at Lyons, a manu- factory of potash or a lime-kiln, infecting the walks for a circuit of half a league, for the good of trade. When the French see the perfectibilization of perfectibi- lizantism in this mephitism of their belle France, they may be justly styled a nation that has no nose, or that only has one to take pleasure in all that is infectious and antipathic to the human smell, like the toad : this is falling into nose- ardy instead of noseism. Such is the defect of the French- man, who makes a trophy of every custom that wounds the smell. Accordingly, as soon as you arrive in France, on leaving Germany, you see irony joined to nastiness in the 76 NOMENCLATURE OF filthy inn privies, on the doors of which people take care to write No. 100 (cent), that is to say, scent (smell), and not cent ; an inscription that adds a coarse pun to the infection and the dirt which have been left to greet the traveller. There are none of these filthy practices in Germany, and the comparison of the two peoples obliges one to fix upon the French the epithet of a noseard, visuard and earard na- tion, which takes pleasure in all the depraved usages of vision, of hearing and of smell ; you might prove the same abuse in the use they make of the two other senses. These definitions sufl&ce to prove that the ending in ard and ardy is suitable to express the defective use of a sense, and that you might, from analogy, designate under the names of gust- ardy and tactardy those defective habits of taste and touch. I leave to cleverer men than myself the care of regulating this nomenclature. Let us add a sketch of it in relation with the seven animic passions. To designate their subversive developments, I think I ought to select in like manner the endings ish and ard, already admitted to describe detraction in our language. The name of step-motherish (mm'dtre) is given to a bad mother ; in the same way, you can, by appli- cation, give the name of familish to the abuse of the passion, to the spirit of an unjust parentage that only seeks to rob its relations, and, in all tranquillity of conscience, disavows the poor, and the bastard, or bar-sinister branches, under the pre- text that you act for the good of your wife and children. If this rapacity is a necessary effect of the family tie or spirit of paternity, this spirit is then the foe of the human race, since it arms every citizen against the interests of his kind, and gives him a heart of iron for all that does not belong to his direct and and legal lineage. An effect of this nature is very much opposed to the spirit of philanthropy, which ought to render all human beings reciprocally serviceable without respect to parentage : such will be, in harmony, the effect of the family spirit. It will make every father more vigilant respecting the collective interests, and anxious to concur in the profit of his neighbor as well as in his own ; because he and his children, in con- THE SUBVERSIVE GAMUT. ^^ sequence of industrial association, will only be able to find their advantage in the general welfare. In the present day, owing to the industrial incoherence, every father is obliged to found his fortune and that of his children upon intrigues, frauds, and rapines, greatly opposed to the good of the mass. Here then is the spirit of family, or paternal love, operating differently in the two societies called civilization and harmony. We cannot dispense with giving it two names adapted to the different developments it takes in these two societies. In civilization, the paternal spirit performs the function of social mardtre or step-mother, which seeks to rob the mass for the sake of one family. This step-mother spirit is that of all the civilizee fathers. Instead of seeing in their neigh- bors fellow-citizens to protect, they only see rivals to plunder; and, under the pretence of being good fathers of family, they become social step-fathers (parastres) to all their neighbors, friends, brothers, and compatriots. Such a spirit as this ought to be called familish, or mischievous development of the family tenderness, in favor of which philosophy wishes to abase all the other passions. They give the sceptre to the family group to which they wish to subject all the social ties, and yet it is that one which ought to hold the last rank in the Spirit of God, because it is not free, since it is ruled by affinity of blood. Egoism which it exalts to the highest degree,* being a forced depravation in the case of all the civilizee families, the passion of familism is consequently amongst us, transformed into familish ; a name that characterizes the subversive deve- lopment of the said passion. The three other affectives may in like manner receive the names of friendish, honorish, loveish. * '• There is no purpose for man beyond himself, i. e., his true spiritual life. ... I repeat whatever is mind, is absolutely egotistical. . . . No man can be anything else than an egotist." — Philosophy of Nature, by Stallo, p. 162, 163, and 143. " The ego, as the subject of this freedom, is, as you know, reflexion. This, as you also know, in its first function, forms, determines, and characterizes the world." — Fichte's Blessed Life, p. 154, Catholic Series. 78 NOMENCLATURE OF In order to give a common ending to the twelve passions, the three distributives considered in civilizee development may be called : Intrigueish, Papillonish and Compositish, or Cabalish, Alternish. Let us examine a single one of the three, — the cabalist. There is nothing more odious in civilizee development. Political parties, when they are at loggerheads and free from the curb of authority, very speedily proceed to massacre, to proscriptions. These furies, so common among the agitators of Greece and Rome, have been renewed in our time. We have seen the different parties send each other to the scaffold in France. In Spain,* a cabal of monks strangled those who had fought honorably for the legitimate dynasty. These recent examples sufficiently prove that the cabalist is the most devastating of the passions in civilizee development. Yet, it is this very passion that, in harmony, is the minister of concord by means of the balances and honorable processes that it introduces in the rivalries of the groups and of the series. Until we come to the description I mean to give of it in the Synthesis, we must admit provisionally this opposition of properties between the civilizee cabal and the harmonian emulation. Hence results the necessity of different names for the two developments of the cabalist, and in like manner for those of the papillon and of the composite. In designating them according to the modern method of the chemists,t by a nomenclature with cognate endings, I repeat the remark, that I attach very little importance to names. Accordingly I have given them as a specimen, that I submit in the following table to the criticism of profes- sional men : — * In 1821, when Riego the Empecinado and many eminent patriots fell, who, after restoring Ferdinand VII., were put to death by him and his priests, backed by the Due d'Angouleme, because they wanted a Cortes and a constitution. — Translator. t See the chapter on Chemical Nomenclature, p. 9, of Reid's Text Book of Chemistry. — Translator. THE SUBVERSIVE GAMUT. 79 Harmonic Nomenclature. rSeehood. S Hearhood. g ■< Smellhood. ^ Tastehood. l^Touchhood. {Friendhood Lovehood. Honorhood. Family hood. • rintriguehood. :| -^ Varietyhood. <:« LDovetailhood. X Unityhood. Subversive Nomenclature. 'Sightish. Earish. Noseish. Tasteish. ^Touchish. . rFriendish. ■^ J Loveisb. I I Honorish. '^ [^Familish. . rintrigueish. :| -< Varyish. «« i^Dovetailish. tx! Doublebood. This table is drawn up iu conformity with the grammatical and moral usages. We adopt the ending ish to describe detraction : if we only cite a color^ supposing it to be of a poor shade, it will be called reddish, greenish, blackish, that is to say, a wretched red, a wretched green, a wretched black, a dull and false shade like that of people of olive complexions. I have given a great many other names, such as 10. Intriguing, 11. Worsening, 12. Misallying, or Dissenting, or Alternating, or Coinciding, to leave the option and a free field to punctilious folks. These sorts of debates are very useless, and I would willingly adopt any nomenclature that cleverer people may propose to desig- nate the twelve passional caterpillars, and distinguish them from the twelve noble developments.'^ * It is very difficult to render Fourier's peculiarities of language into good English. He took no pains himself to write good French. His style is exceed- ingly original. It is often very clear and forcible, when utterly at variance with the common rules of syntax. In this instance Fourier's French table will be more easily understood by EngUshmen than any English table we can give. We will therefore transcribe it. Nomenclature Harmonique. Nomenclature Subversive. /■ Visu'isme. /^ Visuatre. V Ouisme. 6 Oreillatre. .2 W Odorisme. '$_ < Nasuatre. ^ Goiitisme. ^ Gustuatre. ^ Tactisme. ^ Tactuatre. 80 NOMENCLATURE, ETC. Nomenclature Harmoniquc. Nomenclature Subversive. ^ r Amicisme. ,; r- Amicatre. J J Amorisme. '\ J Amouratre. p 1 Honorisme. g | Honoratre. ^ ^ Familisme. '^ ^ Familiatre. Intrigueisme. « f Intriguatre. Varietisme. :| < Variatre. Engrenisme. •» L Engrenatre. ><1 Uniteisme. >^ According to the unity of system, we ought in social affairs, as in physical studies, to join hands with the universal agent of God, attraction; determine by regular calculations, his aim in connection with the passions, an aim that can be no other than their development. God would fall into duplicity of system, into contradiction with himself, if, in giving us passions, He obliged us to repress them. He ought according to the unity of system, either not to have given them to us, or to permit their deve- lopment as He evidently does in the case of all other beings. He ought, finally, to have composed and revealed a social code compatible with the development of the passions. Has he failed to give us this passional code, or have we failed to seek after it ? as guilty as he who destroys by steel or poison ; love and homicide are conse- quently crimes of equal magnitude in the eyes of nature, of human reason, and of divine justice ! The new-born child is devoted to hell, unless you pour water on his head. There is scarcely an action, a desire, a thought in matters of love, that is not qualified as a mortal sin. . . . Does not the reader feel that this strange association of absurdities and of virtues, of enjoyments that nature permits, and of crimes that it proscribes, become necessarily prejudicial to morality ?" — Dupuis Abregi de VOrigine de tons les cultes, p. 424 and 429. 94 ULTERLOGUE. 1. According to the universality of Providence, our pas- sions are destined to a full development ; for, if God had judged it opportune that they should be repressed, He would have provided us individually with a force capable of reining them in; but neither reason, nor wisdom shine in this struggle, and the pretenders to wisdom, the distributors of reason, are the very men most enslaved to their own pas- sions. Whence it is evident that God did not wish for their repression, for if He had wished it, His providence would have given us the means of resisting our passions. 2. According to the economy of springs, can it be thought that the Supreme economist would have given us springs, whereof He wished to prohibit the use ? Have we some use- less member or viscera, or muscle in the material distribution of the body ? No, they must all act, and the stagnation or obstruction of some or any one of them injures the health of the whole body; it is the same with the soul, which is a mechanism in which the equilibrium can only be established by the integral employment of all its springs or passions. 3. According to distributive justice, whether God blames or approves the development of the passions. He necessarily disapproves the civilizee and barbarian order that admits this development in the case of certain rich men, and obstructs it in the case of the poor multitude ; this order falls into dupli- city of action and becomes incompatible with the wish of divine justice, whether it authorizes or interdicts the delop- ment of the passions. This parallel of the passions with the properties of God leads one to infer that they were made for general develop- ment, and, consequently for a social order different from the civilizee and barbarian state, that could not admit their deve- lopment in the multitude; and which, in the case of the Sybarites and Princes, still opposes numberless obstructions to the play of the passions. We must then seek a different social order, and one com- patible with the full development of our passions. God hath been obliged, according to the unity of system, to give us this code which ought to develop our passions. To be cer- ULTERLOGUE. 95 tain that it is discovered, we must analyze the degrees or scales of each passion, after which we shall be able to verify if the system of the passional series exactly fulfils the condi- tion of developing each of the twelve in all its degrees and in all individuals. My theory would be a mere jugglery if it did not solve this fearful problem, of which I shall give the most complete solution. FOURIER ON THE HUMAN SOUL. PART III. VOL. II. PART III. OF PARCOURS,* TRANSITS, FLITTING RAPTURES, PASSIONAL DELIGHTS, OR EXHILARATIONS, AND OF UNITYISM. CHAPTER I. OF TUE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS, OR OF THE DISTRIBUTIVES RAISED IN POWER. Passional delights and unityism are two effects of harmony, so proximate and so intimately connected that it is proper to unite them in the same section. One serves as an approach to the othei% for between flitting raptures and unityism, the only difference is that from the simple to the compound. Exhilarations are the conjunction of a mass of pleasures successively enjoyed in a short session. Parcours require a series of several delights that are chained together with art in the same locality, mutually enhancing each other and pre- senting themselves at such short intervals that you do nothing but glide over each of them ; you just skim over the sensa- tion which is allied to the following ones and augments their intensity. The parcours or transits are of three sorts, those of the cabalist, those of the papillou, and those of the composite ; * Parcours is a word of Fourier's creation, not easily rendered into English. Transit, is the nearest literal approximation ; the meaning is, passional delight, exhilaration, or flitting raptures. — H. D. h2 100 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. they are in some sort the high accords of the three distri- butives, which have not a scale or gamut of degrees like the nine other passions. We shall proceed to define all three of them. 1. Transits in Comjjosite, (it is that one which is cited in Theory of Unity, book iv., sec. viii., and the New Industrial World, sec. v., chap, xxxix.) This parcours requires that the pleasures whereof it is composed should be connected with each other, and with one, two, or three pivots. There would be no parcours in a mass of six pleasures enjoyed every quarter of an hour ; they would be six rapid sessions, and not a parcours of delights which requires the revolving of several pleasures around a single focus, and their rapid succession limited to the time that is commonly occupied by one session of amusement, confined to one hour and a half, or at most to two hours. In the civilizee order, where enjoyments are very rare, you would require to contrive intervals between each, to defer some of them in order to provide against stagnations, mo- ments of tediousness, and crises of ennui, which follow close upon moments of pleasure. But in harmony, where delights flow together in torrents, especially for the rich, you would never succeed in embracing half such an amount of pleasures if you had not the art of disposing them in transits, binding the enjoyments together in the same locality and a single session, conjoining them either to one and the same object or to the same person, and developing in them combinedly the three distributive passions — the arbiters of pleasure. I hear the critics exclaim : What is the good of romantic pictures of incomprehensible delights ? it is bread that is wanted for the people, Avho want plenty of work and a suffi- ciency of food. As for the rich, they have already but too many pleasures according to moralists, who recommend mo- deration and mediocrity. Our aristarchs have judged very badly respecting God if they expect moderate pleasures from Him. Immensity of happiness in harmony, or immensity of miseries in the social THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 101 limbo ; that is, it cannot be too often repeated, the option God leaves us. Moderation is good as a channel of refine- ment of the pleasures, but not as a deliberate privation. Besides, science, which preaches moderation to us, has only led us for the last 3000 years to poverty, to cheating, to carnage ; it is therefore, in fact, a demoniacal science. Let us renounce this science, and study the more humane science of attraction, that desires to load us with riches and with pleasures. 2. Transit in PapiUon. It is composed of an infinity of homogeneous or heterogeneous pleasures, all united and run through very rapidly in a single session. To admire a mu- seum, to see in the course of one hour an hundred good pictiu'cs whereof each excites a different impression, this is a little transit in simple papiUon ; the compound is what we must attain to ; but let us speak first of the simple. Let us suppose ourselves in the future order of harmony, where at the end of a centiuy scientific men and artists will aboiuid to such an extent that a small country, like Sicily, will contain more celebrated men than the sum total of the civilizee regions do now. It will then become very easy to collect a mass of scientific men and artists of aU kinds, from five to six hundred individuals, each of whom will be a Homer or a Pindar, a Phidias or a Raphael, a CorneiUe or a Moliere. Let us also admit that in this new order the female sex will shine as much as the male in the arts and sciences, and that, even in geometry and chemistry, women will be found to rival Newton and Davy, though, in this department, the female sex will generally devote itself to the arts more than to the sciences. In case this numerous party of artists were to travel, each district Avhere it soj omened for one day would thereby taste a simple transit in the presence and entertainment of so many celebrated personages ! A hundredth part of this number woidd suffice ^-itli us to electrify a whole country. If, instead of a caravan of six hundred illustrious men, six only were seen to arrive ; a coach bringing Voltaire, CorneiUe, Bossuet, Buffo n, Moliere, Poussin, sojom'ning two or three days in 102 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. Paris, hoAV great would be the ardor of the learned l)odies to entertain these eminent travellers ! Every rich man, con- versant with the sciences or with the arts, would consider it an honor to have treated the six travellers at his house. The admission to the repast would be solicited as a high favor. Every one would regard that as one of the most interesting hours of his life which he had spent in their society; the pleasure of entertaining and of hearing them in turn would already be a shadow of transit in papillon ; but if the number of these great men was extended to six hundred instead of six, the transit of delights would become immense. Though of simple order or of the first power, let us raise it to another degree, that of scientific papillonage. It would be almost impossible to us, in such a case, be- cause civilizee education does not initiate us into all sorts of knowledges. A geometer with us is only a geometer, and not a man of letters ; a chemist is not a virtuoso in music. So that if a caravan were to start up containing a hundred dis- tinguished great men or diverse groups of geometers, natural philosophers, naturalists, poets, painters, musicians, comedians, dancers, &c., each of our existing great men could not keep up a conversation with these difi"erent groups. Our chemists would feel greatly embarrassed in a group of dancers, if they were obliged to discuss the art ; and vice versa, the dancers would be very sterile in a debate about chemistry. Every one would consequently be obliged to frequent the group of his own sphere, and such a man who would greatly enjoy the conversation of Pindar and Homer would not enjoy that of Phidias and Praxiteles. Our savans could not relish the sci- entific papillonage with this caravan. Moreover, our ladies, who are only taught frivolities, would notice the singers and dancers only of the caravan ; but in harmony, where men and women are more or less initiated into all sorts of know- ledges, each of thera will enjoy the talk of the different groups of the visitors. Let us oppose to the preceding picture a comparison of the reception that would be given in the present day to a company THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 103 of savans and artists, composed not of six hundred, but only of about sixty individuals, or even of a score, as I saw at Marseilles at tlie time of tbe expedition to Egypt. The savans and artists, in their travels, are now objects of sterile admiration, only academical curiosities exposed to the stare of the gaping crowd. I saw at Marseilles all these savans of Egypt considered like a menagerie of wild beasts : they com- monly walked about together, and the populace ran after them exclaiming, without malice, " Des savannes ! des sa- vannes /" — Learned men ! learned men ! just as people would cry out, wild bears ! ivild bears ! I saw them enter the cafe Casati, Necker Place, in a body ; the crowd perched itself around them on stools to see them take coffee, and, every one on going away, exclaimed, " I have seen the learned folks " (des savannes !J amazed to find that learned men took coffee like other men, and that they drank before they swallowed. That is the wit and spriglitliness of Marseilles and of the friends of trade. All that is not ringing money or bales of goods seems to them the height of absurdity ; they are some- what right as civilizees, since money is the only thing honor- able in civilization. But in harmony the arts and sciences enjoy an eminence greatly superior to that of fortune. There are three reasons for this : — 1st. Because the cultivation of the arts and sciences leads to the acquisition of an immense fortune in cases of success- ful discovery and useful progress. 2nd. Because labor being attractive, the richest men yield themselves with ardor to the cultivation of the sciences and arts. 3rd. Because the class devoted to the arts and sciences is commonly very opulent, owing to the immense profits that accrue to. this kind of industry. In this state of things the intercourse with artists and men of science travelling in caravans will be considered as a favor, and the eagerness to hold communion of friendship or of love with them will be no longer a libertine impulsion, but a movement of refined enthusiasm. 104 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. In addition to tlie impulse of the senses and the moral feelings, this intercourse will have the noble stimulus of ad- miration and enthusiasm for the arts and sciences. These are already powerful motives to embellish and excuse the weak- nesses of love. If Corneille or Racine could resuscitate under the forms of old men, a great many women would hold it as an honor to make their conquest ; they would be vain of it, and say, Corneille is not an ordinary man : love for him is not ignoble love. What would happen then, if they were to resuscitate with the features of the bloom of life ? We know well how the enthusiasm for the fine arts disposes to the highest sympathy : a woman will see celebrated artists in society without knowing their condition, their talent ; they will not fix her attention ; but if on the morrow she sees them shine on the stage, she will fall in love with these artists whom, the night before, she saw with indifference. Civilization knows already how to anticipate these cus- toms and even to exceed them in all directions ; witness the story of the shameless Judith, who, for the salvation of the people of God, goes to throw herself into the arms of Holo- fernes, and then cut off his head whilst he is asleep and in her bed. We can make allowance for a beauty going to in- trigue with the enemy's general, but to cut off his head for the glory of God ! . . . 3. Transit in Cabalist. It is not easy to know where ex- amples can be found. In ci\'ilization I see a germ of it in the assemblages of merchants and of speculators in the ex- change. A clever merchant, with unbounded credit, haA-ing all sorts of business to transact in mercantile or public stock, or banking operations, and capable of carrying on twenty different negociations at once, is in a cabalistic transit of ex- citements during one hour that he spends on change. But this transit is very feeble and devoid of all the charms it might produce in harmony. The intrigues of the exchange have no motors but those of interest, apart from those of pleasure ; they are sordid cabals in which enthusiasm has no share. Let us suppose that this multiplicity of cabals should THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 105 adapt itself to twenty real pleasures instead of to twenty hig- gling negociations, we shall have an idea of the delight that the session of the exchange will procure to every harmonian, where men^ women and children go at the decline of day to negociate the pleasures and the gatherings of the following days, as well for their phalanx, as for the neighboring pha- langes, whereof each has its titular ambassadors and nego- ciators dwelling at all the others. We have sometimes in civilization sessions of pleasure where shadows of transital delights are found, but these transits have the defect of wanting a cabal and a link of union. For example, in the transit of composite, cited farther back, nothing is cabalistic ; they are pleasures heaped up without resistance, or the zest of an overcome rivalry ; it is known that the cabalistic victory doubles the zest of a triumph. It is consequently losing the half of a pleasure, or at least a good part of it, to separate it from the cabalistic spirit and the zest of a conquered difficulty. This zest exists in all the relations of the harmonians ; with them every one is inebriated with his daily trophies without any one^s being fatigued by his defeats, because the conquered have so many compensations, so many successes in other cabals, that every one acquires the habit of counting his successes without thinking of reverses, and, according to a mercantile dictum, profits make amends for losses. This advantage depends on the progressive system which reigns in cabals. If one party carried on a contest to make the culture of apples prevail over that of pears, it would run great risk of being confounded ; but if the intrigue is sub- divided, graduated over 100 sorts of apples and 150 sorts of pears, the pretensions and rivalries are intermingled to such an extent that every one has his mind filled with the memo- ries of successes, and not those of defeat. An officer who has been in a hundred battles, will readily tell you of those wherein he was "sictorious, but very sparingly of those where he was beaten ; he will skim over the latter, and supposing 106 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. he has shared in fifty victories and in an equal number of defeats, he will make the victories resound much louder, and will be much more hectoring about them than he will be moved by the memory of the fifty defeats. Listen to the soldiers of two opposite armies ; each of them only speaks of his ^dctories, whence it would follow that each of them had obtained a complete triumph, and yet one of the parties at least has at times experienced reverses. This comparison depicts to the life the state of harmo- nians in cabalistic affairs ; they have such numerous cabals that they never see anything but their bright sides, and every one in harmony is in a state of perpetual triumph, thinking of successes only, without taking an account of failures. This intoxication could not take place if the cabals were few in number ; you would run the risk of being long overwhelmed by a reverse before being fired by a success ; you must there- fore in cabalistic affairs take refuge in numbers and variety. You only succeed in this by establishing innumerable cabals, progressively classed and multiplied on every subject. Such is the property of the progressive series in the labors and the pleasures of association. It is only in connection with a great number of cabals that a transit of delights can be established. A merchant who had only one affair to transact on change would be badly off for the excitement of intrigue, and even stultified. He would be obliged to invent a number of sham intrigues in order to conceal the true one ; but if he has really a score of different degrees, he is well off for intrigues, and puzzles well all those who are in conflict with him, for he himself does not know how his first transactions will influence the last ; his decisions respecting the concerns 18, 19, 20, will depend to some extent upon the turn that the concerns 1, 2, 3, first treated, will have taken ; his opinion may change in treating of 4, 5, 6, and in the course of a single hour on change, it will have undergone fluctuations that neither he nor his anta- gonists could foresee on going to the exchange. He has therefore been well off for intrigues in the course of this hour ; THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 107 his little political system has experienced numerous oscilla- tiouSj and the hour has been really for him a cabalistic transit, but a transit of dry business only, and not of pleasures. The zest of the cabalistic transit is so po^werful even in business, that a merchant would like to be able to get up a score of affau's important enough on change to intrigue the brokers and give life to the transactions. Those who have no business on hand, create fictitious ones. No situation is more insipid on change than that of the man who has only one transaction, a single intrigue. Pleasui'e on this head rests entirely on transit. Every thing in harmony is disposed so as to create cabals at every step. A meal of thirty dishes served up at the table of the minimum class is a subject of twenty cabals to be disembroiled, and the impossibility of being able to attend to them suffi- ciently will be one of the causes why every harmonian will complain that God hath not given forty-eight instead of twenty-four hours to the day. I have often said on seeing these rich people and fine ladies, whom the valets fear to wake at eight o'clock in the morning : All these gay people, in harmony, will be up and stu'ring as early as four o'clock in the morning, even in ■winter. And how will you be able to make them turn out of bed ? Notliing is more easy ; because in this new order there is commonly before four and five o'clock, a.m., a transit of delights made up of the three parcours of composite, of papillon, and of cabalist. From that time, he or she whom the night-warders forgot to rouse would miss the transit and would be inconsolable on waking. Accordingly, in this order of things it is a marked punishment on the part of the rulers to give the order to the night-warders not to wake such and such a person. Harmony offers every day, from four to five o'clock in the morning, several scenes worthy of general curiosity. You run through them during that short hour which is wound up by the first breakfast, or early morning meal ; after which comes the religious matins or hymn of hail to God in grand orchestra or general congregation ; and lastly, by the parade 108 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. of the industrial groups_, wliich spread themselves thence over the fields and in the workshops."^ Each repast has a special character, a tone that reigns there pretty generally in the three classes. I confine myself to impart a knowledge of the antienne, or first repast, that takes place in the early morning, before sallying forth from the palace. The first breakfast is not susceptible of punctuality; a pleasing irregularity prevails in it. As individuals rise at dif- ferent hours, the first meal is divided into three acts : there is the prime anterior for some groups that go to work very early ; the grand central anterior for the mass of the groups that sets itself in motion one hour later ; and the post anterior for the last risen. The covers are renewed at each of the three acts ; as a general rule, all the meals are more or less susceptible of this division into three acts. The great, the central anterior, which takes place about five o'clock in the morning, is very gay, very attractive, in all respects. Commonly the travellers of distinction who have passed the night at the neighboring station, are presented at the central anterior meal, or first breakfast. You find there the bulletin of the news arrived dmnng the night and collected by the watch ; you learn there the theatrical representations prepared by the neighboring phalanges, the movement of the caravans that approach the country, the tournaments of the diff'erent paladins of the globe, the movements of the indus- trial legions or productive armies. Lastly, you find there the papers arrived during the night, either from the congress of unity sitting at the Bosphorus, or from the inferior con- gresses of the Amazons, and of the Chesapeak. The anterior meal is moreover a second exchange, an ap- pendix of negociations ; for since the meeting agreed on the evening before may be hindered by the news of the night, and other incidents posterior to the previous day's session on change, it is at the anterior meal that the conciliatory mea- * Here follows some details respecting the morning parade, drawn from a loose sheet of manuscrijit (piece 26, supplementary side), that has already ap- peared in tlie Democratic Facifque of the 21th May, 181G. — French Editors. THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 109 sures are canvassed suddenly ; and tins task is confided to the negociators, clerks, or aids, "who are ambulating functionaries dui'ing the first meal. These combined distractions convert the anterior into a very irregular repast, a very delightful imbroglio, that collects a great many other surprizes, whereof I avoid speaking, be- cause they do not coincide with our customs. I will add, that the anterior meal alone would suffice to make the most fond-of-bed mortal get up at five o'clock in the morning, even if he were not excited by the desii'e of assisting at the sessions of his groups, which commence on rising fi'om the early meal and even before. Accordingly, after the central anterior breakfast it would be hard to find in bed an eighth part of the phalanx. The central anterior ends, in fine days, by the lesser morning parade. Here is its description ; I suppose it to occui* at five o'clock in the morning. At a quarter before five, some chimes sound the summons to the lesser parade and the hymn of dawn; the company prepare in the rooms of the refectory to descend in the course of five minutes ; on descending you find under the porch the instruments of the musicians, the decorations of the priests and officials of the parade, &c. Five o'clock strikes; the athlet Conradin, aged 14, and the major of the service, com- mands the groups to form. I have stated on a previous occa- sion that the officers of the lesser parade are di'awn from the choir of athlets ; thus the aids-de-camp of Conradin are, like himself, aged 13 and 14; they are the athlets Antenor and Amphion for the groups of men; the athlets Clorinda and Galatea for the groups of women. Amphion and Galatea go on the one hand to form the orchestras ; Antenor and Clorinda go to prepare the order of march. They fall in, in the following order : — I suppose that the muster consists of foiu' hundred per- sons, men, women and childi-en, and that the sum total composes twenty groups ready to start for different points of the adjoining country. The twenty standard-bearers place themselves in line and at a distance, facing the front of the 110 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. palace and behind the flags. The troop is formed into an orchestra by vocal and instrumental divisions, having a priest or a priestess at the head of each group. Before the priest a lighted censer and an infant of the same sex that holds the perfumes, with a hierophant or high-priest between the co- lumns of the two sexes ; the drums or trumpets arc on both sides of the porch ; the animals and the cars are ranged along the sides of the court. In the centre is the major Conradin, having at his side the aids-de-camp and before him four children of the choir of neophytes. They carry signal flags, and manoeuvre to trans- mit the orders to the signal tower, that repeat them to the domes of the neighboring castles, to the groups already spread in the country, and to the palaces of the neighboring cantons. When all is ready the roll of drums imposes silence, and the major commands the hail to God. Then the drums, the trumpets, and all the military music make themselves heard ; the chimes of the surrounding domes play together, the incense rises, the flags wave in the air, and the streamers float upon the pinnacles of the palace and of the castles ; the groups, already in the fields, unite in this ceremony ; the travellers place foot to ground, and the caravans assist in the holy salute before quitting the station. At the end of one minute the salute ceases, and the hie- rophant gives the signal of the hymn by striking three mea- sures uj)on the diapason of universal unity ; the priests and priestesses placed over the vocal and instrumental parts thunder forth the chant, and then the hymn is simg by all the groups in chorus. The hymn being finished, the little khan causes the muster to be beaten to the flags, the orchestra breaks up its ranks, deposits its instruments, and every one goes to range himself beneath the banner of his industrial group ; it is in this order that the troop files ofi" in various masses and in all directions, for being formed of difierent ages, from the child to the old man, they would look awkward if they filed off in line and step as the quadrilles of the grand parade do. They range themselves in artificial disorder, and direct themselves THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. Ill first towards the animals ; each group takes its cars at the passage, and making them advance abreast with itself, they file off successively before the grand peristyle, beneath which certain dignitaries are stationed, such as a palladin of the sovereign wearing his escutcheon, if it is a minor parade, and if it is a grand parade, a palladin of the emperor of Unity bearing the cycloidal crescent. Each group, on passing, receives a salute proportioned to its rank ; the groups of agriculture and masonry, which are the first, are saluted by a high flourish, equivalent to the drum that beats to field ; thence they proceed each one to its destination. The salute of praise to God regularly traverses the globe in different directions ; if it is a day of equinox, there is a grand parade at sun-rise, and the spherical hierarchy presents at dawn a line of congregations or phalanges two or three thousand leagues in length, whose hymns succeed each other during the space of twenty-four hours all round the globe, as each longitude receives the dawn. At the two solstices, the hymns are chanted at once upon the whole globe and by the entire human race, at the instant corresponding to the noon- day of Constantinople. The morning salute is performed Uke a running fire of artillery, that during the summer travels from the north pole to the south pole, and in the opposite direction during winter. The public fetes follow the same order : the day of the summer solstice, the whole northern hemisphere dines together en famille, or in descending groups, and the whole southern hemisphere in quadrilles or ascending groups ;* the two hemi- spheres dine in an opposite order on the day of the winter solstice. This morning assembly is interesting also as a session of after-change, where negociators go to modify arrangements and agreements entered into the preceding day at the retui-n * " Ascending and descending groups," here signify groups of the ascending phases of life, friendsliip and love, or youth and adolescence ; groups of the descending phases of life, ambition and familism, or middle and declining age. — H. D. 112 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. session of night-fall. These numerous stimulants form a mixed transit of different ingredients, and these stimulants of the dawn suffice to set on foot the whole canton from the early morning. It will be seen that there exist plenty of other motives of matutinal diligence, amongst others the vestal court. Accordingly in harmony you must be either infirm or ill to make up youj' mind to stay in bed after four o'clock in the morning. A man whom they purposely neglected to wake would be disconcerted on going two hours later to the sessions of the different groups ; he would have lost the thread of the intrigues, and his spite would be extreme. The spirit of cabal is of itself so pleasant and so necessary to the human mind, that it forms in each passion a distinct enjoyment, which moreover may be relished separately and alone. The man who does not mingle in political intrigues, delights in knowing the cabals that reign in them ; he wishes to be informed about them day by day by means of the news- papers or other notices; their recital becomes a necessary food to him, although he does not take part in the intrigues themselves. It is thus in love ; such a man who does not figure in it takes pleasure in being regularly informed of the state of the intrigues and cabalistic gossipings. Accordingly works that unveil secret intrigues are devoured, even those of a past court or generation : what would happen with a journal that were able to unveil each morning all the intrigues of the court, of the political and of the gay world ? Nevertheless the civilizee cabals into which initiation is so much sought after, are generally simple, and without connec- tion or gradation ; those of love are not wedded to those of ambition, of gastronomy, of trade, of arts and sciences. Hence the cabalist in ci\ilization cannot depart from the simple degree, nor rise to the second, third, fourth, and fifth powers, that would require intermediate links and a perma- nent concourse of several kinds of cabals. The cabalistic transit exists in genera and degrees of genera, for it assembles and associates several genera, such as the fine arts, lovers' suits, gastronomy, industry, &c. ; it ex- tends their intrigues from canton to district, from district to THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 113 province, from province to kingdom, from kingdom to region, as far as to embrace the whole globe. Every one Avill he more or less implicated in these numerous intrigues, and sti- mulated by their daily movements. The reader may conceive from this what immense developments the cabalistic transits must have in harmony ; a kind of pleasure so valuable to the civilizees, and especially to the women, whom public opinion reproaches very foolishly for this inclination, which will very shortly be found to be the principal source of general riches. For it is upon the cabalist that is founded the whole mechan- ism of the series and all industrial emulation in harmony. I have described the three kinds of transits under the title of composite, papillou, and cabalist. A transit comes under the head of unityism when it modulates with these three pas- sions at once. The transits are not a general want. Certain apathetic characters can dispense with them, but the ruling characters or polygynes, especially of the high degrees 5, 6, 7, 8, cannot do without them. A proof that the passional transit is a want of the higher orders and of the most polished minds, is that you see germs of it laid in the relations of the opulent and cultivated classes. Those who can afford it must have fetes of simple transit. In certain public soirees, such as the Tivoli at Paris, a simple transit of papillon order is contrived at a great ex- pence; ball, concert, rope-dancing, pantomime, fireworks, balloon, jousts, games, gymnastics, Russian mountains, danc- ing dolls, grimaces, and other amusements, among which each one may play the butterfly and flit about in all directions. But these transits are poverty itself; for, besides that it is only of the first degree and of a single sort, they ofi'er no composite delights, no pleasure of the soul united to that of our senses j and enhanced by intrigues, except in the case of love adventures favored by the locality ; but this intrigue is foreign to the general festivity : it is not linked to it, and would be carried on in like manner in every suitable locality. Thus in our known transits all is limited to the lowest degree, to the simple or bastard genus ; and yet, such mediocre transits VOL II. I 114 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. are already considered as supreme refinements, "vvliereon the capitals pride themselves, and to which country towns could not attain. In private /eVes a shadow of transit is often attempted to be organized. The repast is divided into several little tables, where the guests sit together as they please without formality or stiff propriety. These tables may be visited alternately by every one connected with the majority of the comisany ; too little friendship reigns however in civilization for these transits to be animated. Yet they offer a gleam of that kind of pleasure it is wished to organize. Care is taken to repro- duce this same transit in the convivialities that follow the repast, and all sorts of games are offered to the company : cards and billiards for staid people, dances for the young folks, nonsense for the children ; in the refreshments, liqueurs are presented to warm the blood of the grand-dads, ices to calm the fires of the dowagers, and lemonade for the boiling youth ; in short, it is endeavored, in all the details of the fete, to organize a transit of delights, a kind of pleasure so rare in civilization, where some simple germs of it are cre- ated with great trouble ; whereas in harmony the poorest of men can hope in the course of one day for more than one transit, and can vary from day to day the nature of his tran- sits, obtain every day those of different kinds, either in com- posite, in papillon, or in cabalist, and obtain frequently unityist transits, combining three kinds of pleasure. This participation in the well-being of the rich is the spring that binds the harmonian people to its social order. If the poor were, as they are with us, reduced to die of hunger whilst the rich man swims in plenty, they would soon become the enemies of social order. But in harmony everything is ar- ranged in such a way that the well-being of the rich is com- municated to the poor, and that a dose of well-being is spread gradatively over all classes ; while in civilization the well- being of the great in no way secures the humble from misery : we find them poorest, on the contrary, in countries of large fortunes, like England, Spain, and liussia. What is wanting in our social system, is the art of making THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 115 the people sliare in the well-being of the great. The transits have this property in harmony^ they promote the welfare of all classes. For example^ at dinner, one of the varieties that constitutes transit, is the retailing of news ; every day har- mony receives news from the whole globe ; it sums them up and abridges them in an office occupied by the patriarchs ; it reviews in like manner the chit-chat of the place and of the vicinity. Some news-mongers, great talkers, take upon them- selves to hawk about the tittle-tattle and the news to all the tables of the first order, and a man of the people, clever at this work, is welcomed at the tables of the great, where a seat is always reserved for the wandering newsmen. The property most deserving of notice in the transits is, that they require progression. They must be distributed in an increasing and decreasing system, like a dinner service, wdiich is a local transit, and in which you reckon on an in- creasing appetite in the two major courses, called introduc- tory and first, whilst you calculate upon a decreasing appetite in the two minor courses, called second and desert. We have no idea in civilization of a progressive link in pleasures ; we only know how to establish the progressive system in serious matters, in the government administration, the church, the army, education. All these functions are pro- gressively distributed, but no progression is seen in pleasures : all is confused with them and without unity. Friends and lovers will certainly be found in some villages, but in none of them do you see gradations of genera among these lovers and friends; among those of the canton, of the district, of the province, of the region ; the tie scarcely extends from one village to another by means of some ball or periodical fete, but the lovers of two villages have no affiliation of pleasures with those of the neighboring town, and this incoherence is one of the capital vices of civilization. We shall revert again to this subject in treating of the focal passion or unityism, w'hich requires a general gradation. The reader may have remarked that transit hath only a zest, inasmuch as it binds the different pleasures that have been traversed together. This effect does not take place in I 2 116 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. onrf^tes, where there is no tie, either between the pleasures locally enjoyed, or between the societies of different countries. Let us prove this by an observation respecting gastronomy. It is entirely unprovided with intrigue and affiliation : people will not pay attention in Paris to a feast of gastronomers given at Rome or at Vienna ; the civilizee savans do not cor- respond on Avhat relates to pleasures. A meal of cabalistic gastronomy makes a noise over the whole globe, if the oracles or guests are illustrious men of science ; their corporation dinner is a conclave in which principles are established and the gauntlet is thrown down to opposite sects. Such a repast gives birth to controversies, protestations, schisms, and ex- communications ; or if the meal is learnedly distributed, it becomes a channel of fame for the phalanx, which has sus- tained a theme and quashed certain heresies in cookery and in hygiene, by the wisdom of its dinner-service and the depth of its gastrosophic learning. In this case, a meal becomes a means of connection and of unity ; it creates cabalistic parties on every dish and con- trives varieties of pleasures that our civilizees would not know, incapable as they are of establishing methodical doc- trines on the subject of cookery. They are not better off as regards other pleasures, such as love, where everything is arbitrary, and where every novelist makes laws after his own fashion. For want of these doctrines, no regular cabal pre- vails in debates of pleasure, no means of spiritual transit founded on the differences of genera and the graduations of intrigues. We are confined in civilization to the material transits, which are very limited and of feeble interest. We are, as respects pleasures, like the Tartars passing before our monuments of Paris, that they did not even condescend to look at, and we see no subject of intrigue where the harmo- nious will know how to create twenty party spirits that will form cabals and contrive transits in cabalist by the differences of systems ; in papillon, by experiments on each shade of pleasure; in composite, by the marriage of moral ecstasies with sensual delights. Transits are then a new career for us, and especially that THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. 117 of the unityism which develops the three springs a-breast, and causes the composite, the papilloii, and the cabahst to prevail at once in a series of pleasures rapidly traversed in ascending and descending progression. The unitary transit is a pleasure adapted to our literary laws that wish to unite the three unities of action, of time, and of place ; but a transit is no less very agreeable even Avhen it only modulates upon one of the three passions, or on some mixture of the three, which it is difficult to develop corabinedly. Transit is the special advantage of the rich in harmony. They have many more chances to procure transits than the poor, who are not deprived of them on that account, how- ever, but who have less opening on this score. I have elsewhere described the daily pastime of a poor man; his minimum of pleasures fixed at 13 and ^ sessions, seven at least of which are in compound, five in simple, and one in transit. The rich man has greatly more brilliant chances of va- riety. He can vary his day so as to figure in the entire cate- gory of pleasures that follows : — One grand pivotal transit, entitled unityism, estimated at 12 voluptuous varieties 12 One grand transit in counter-pivot 12 Four transits of sub-pivots under various titles, esti- mated at 24 sorts of delights 24 Four sessions of mixed order developing the distribu- tives in bastard transits, in the mean term of three delights 12 Seven sessions out of transit in a composite of"' some description 7 Five sessions of simple delight as relays of a short duration 5^ 12 Total 72 Of this nature may be every day in compound harmony, or the eighth period, the pastimes of every rich man or woman. A millionaire will be able to taste more delights in 118 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS, one single day than various civilizees enjoy in tlie whole course of their life. For there are many of our unhappy wretches who M^ould find it difficult to gather in the whole history of their sad career a table of seventy-two pleasures different and deserving of remembrance. Alack ! how many rich people, forced to follow the path of morality and of eti- quette, lead a life equally stripped of pleasures, and only taste as many in the course of a whole month as the poorest of the harmonians will enjoy every day. Moreover the small amount of pleasures that a civilizee finds is poisoned by the anxieties of placing out his children, acquiring or preserving a fortune, harassed by a thousand domestic troubles always numerous even in the richest households. The daily sessions of a man or woman would extend, ac- cording to the preceding table, to twenty-two against seventy- two pleasures, estimating the sessions of transit at one hour, and the others at half an hour each. There would scarcely remain from three to four hours to give to sleep ; it will not occupy a longer time in harmony. People will proceed to ask, for the sake of jest, if this new system will change the temperaments ; if ihe man who is now obliged to sleep seven hours will be able to do with three or four in an order where he will have led a much more active life and traversed during the day a score of sessions of groups, most of them scattered over the country. Harmony will doubtless not change anything in the tem- peraments (a sanguine man will not become bilious on pass- ing into harmony), but it Avill modify the habits and wants of each temperament. A man who now requires from six to seven hours' sleep, will gradually accustom himself to reduce the dose, and will do so the more easily inasmuch as the daily occupations in harmony never cause fatigue or excesses. You do not there see a man battle twelve hours at the pros- trating function of thrashing corn in the broad sunshine, or pass fifteen hours in a cotton-factory without stirring or changing the air. The system is entirely opposite in har- mony : a very varied exercise, but without excess, strengthens the body without exhausting it, especially when it is sustained THE PASSIONAL DKLIGHTS. 119 by a nourishing diet at the five meals, and by some refresh- ments in the interludes. Be it observed that the day of a harmouian is a transit, compared with the days of our labouring population. Even the man who will but rarely be able to procure those plea- sures that I have named transits, will still be in perpetual transit, compared with the actual monotonies and fatigues of life. In setting out, everthing will be less brilliant, and har- mony will not at the outset raise the pleasures to this im- mense variety, to which the existing bodies and souls could not accommodate themselves. Our physical and moral con- stitution has none of the activity necessary for the state of harmony, and our minds, which are said to have reached the perfecting of perfectibility, are as remote from it as Avild fruit is from our garden fruit. Besides, these continual variations of the pleasures of harmony are incomprehensible to our sluggish and cautious intellects. A woman, before going to a ball, is engaged for two days with the toilettes of her rivals and about the, danger of giving a handle to their criticism ; a man going to dine out, thinks of the antagonists whom he will meet there and of the means of securing himself against their snares. There is nothing but jealousy with us instead of emulation for good. This is the cause of the delays and dulness that are seen to prevail in our relations. Accordingly a too frequent variety would become with us a source of confusion ; the most wide- awake man could not suffice for twenty sessions of pleasure in the day. He would there incessantly find motives of dis- trust that would retard his march, and amusements too fre- quently relieved would soon only become to him a wearisome turmoil. The civilizees, heavy people mentally and bodily in carry- ing on pleasures, are what peasants are at table, where they wish to linger a long time over every dish, and ruminate each morsel as slowly as their cattle. You cannot blame them ; they enjoy in a slow manner, which is necessarily that of the civilizees surrounded by ambushes ; they become habituated 120 THE PASSIONAL DELIGHTS. to distrust, and before giving an hour to pleasures, tliey are obliged to give an hour to preparatory wiles ; after which they prolong and exhaust the enjoyment that they have succeeded in securing. If it is certain that the rich man, varying his pleasures three or four times in the course of an evening that a pea- sant spends at table, is a more refined being than that heavy peasant ; it is likewise certain that the harmonians, who will vary them ten or twenty times more than our sybarites, will be proportionally superior in mental and bodily activity. The free and varied exercise of the two material and spiritual faculties will become the pledge of the prodigious vigour the rich will attain to in this new order. Accordingly they will surpass the poor in health, whose inferiors they are at present in vigor, in consequence of the continual excesses into which the rareness of pleasure draws them. The transits being pleasures of a transcendant class, can only be coveted by the class in which education and fortune have developed the passional faculties. This desire is not found in the people. The vincouth class is satisfied either with simple pleasures, or with the three distributives in the first degree only; the peasant is satisfied with an isolated cabal, with an isolated composite, with a single variation. The gentleman wishes, on the contrary, to develop these three passions in high degrees or transits. It is on this account that the philosophers accuse him of being insatiable of enjoy- ments. They are mistaken : man in desiring transits, does not shew himself insatiable, since God ordains an habitual profusion of them in harmony, and since attraction must impel every being to desire the exercise of the function reserved for it. Whosoever wearies of the civilizee mono- tonies, gives proof of that perfectibility of which our age boasts. It will be seen in the treatise on the general scale of characters, that the most eminent, the highest in degree, are the most removed from simple tastes that morality recom- mends to us, and wish to develop their passions in high degrees, in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth powers. Ilcncc it comes that they give into excesses, disturb the THE PASSIOXAL DELIGHTS. 121 moral order, and are impatient at tlie civilizee system, which offers them no pleasures but those of an inferior degree, wherewith their vast souls could not be satisfied. What then do these characters want, that refuse to accom- modate themselves to the civilizee stinginesses ? They strive after the enjoyments of unity ism, which are composed of the ►^Yj^, or eighth degree, of each passion; and by the way, they tend to the transits which are a transition from the pleasures of low degree to the pleasures of unityism. It is for this reason that I have been obliged to treat of the transits as an approach to the focal passion : this latter is the highest degree to which our desires can tend, we have therefore been first obliged to study their development in cumulated va- rieties. We shall study it presently in infinitessimal develop- ment or unityism that embraces the whole of humanity, and becomes in this respect the passion that joins us to God, the point of contact between man and God, whose providence, being universal, embraces the whole human race. CHAPTER II. OF THE MUTILATED AND ABORTIVE PASSIONS. It is proper to contrast with the table of transcendant plea- sures like the transits^ the feeble means of civilization that can, very seldom, raise the passions to their integral develop- ment. How could it reach transit when it hath not even its elements, which are the passions fully developed and brim- ming over to such an extent that they must be heaped toge- ther in one short session ? Instead of this abundance of materials, we see mostly nothing but incomplete, abortive passions, the definition of which is naturally placed beside a table of passions full and brimming over to such an extent as to necessitate transit, raptures, and exhilarations. The authors of repressive systems have only too well suc- ceeded in disfiguring the passions; and one of the effects produced which they have not observed, is, that often, in thinking to repress the mischievous impulsions of our nature, we only end in stifling the good. Let us point out slightly, in the first place, some of these stifled passions ; after that we will mount up to the causes that I shall try to assign, and whereof the analysis will mani- fest the vices of the repressive system. These vicious effects may be divided into abortive and mutilated, effects different from the dislocation which is understood to apply to the whole character ; we are here only engaged with the details and developments that are not in the subversive degree. THE MUTILATED AND ABORTIVE PASSIONS. 123 Nothing is more frequent tliaii abortive passions, and in the first place the twelfth or composite. The civilizees are seen at every age to create factitious and often simple excite- ments for themselves, to heat their imagination respecting minute enjoyments, such as the culture of some flower or the charm of a concert. We are so often obliged to simulate enthusiasm, that when there is a little bit of it, we hasten to display a great deal. Some women, who in the culture of a flower have, when strictly analyzed, only a sensual pleasure of visuism, will fancy they enjoy in it inefi'able delights, which they describe in terms as glowing as if it were a question of com- pound enjoyment, similar to a success in love. Such a woman will affect to find in the care of her flowers, moral delights, illusions for the soul, and will prove nothing more than that her soul requires these illusions, and imagines them where they do not exist, where there is only a simple, sensual plea- sure. It is an abortive composite, a fanciful illusion. Were some true illusion to be joined to the culture of her flowers, such as the help of a young gardener with whom she Avere in love, we might believe in the ineffable delights that she finds in these petty cares. There would be a composite, a pleasure of the senses wedded to a charm of the soul ; that of the senses in the sight of the flowers, embellished by a coincidence of love ; and that of the soul in the presence of the gardener, whose conquest she hopes to make. There would still be a composite, if this woman, having a mania for flowers, held a rank among the amateurs, if she was noticed for her success with competitors, and if her culture were mixed up with the intrigues of ambition and renown. This pretension would be a true pleasure of the soul joined to that of sight. There would be here a real composite, which is only dreamt of in woman as she now exists. This mania of seeking for composites throws the civi- lizees into strange inconsistencies. I am going to mention one. Everybody recollects the famous murder of Fualdes, where the woman Bancal received the blood in a bucket, and kept moving it with her arm while waiting for the SAvinc to make a meal of it. This harmless female called forth the 124 THE MUTILATED AND ABORTIVE PASSIONS, pity of the Toulouse citizens, who gave her lots of alms, and the papers related that the woman Bancal had excited great compassion and collected a great deal of money. Is this really pity, genuine charity ? No, indeed ; it is an effect of abortive composite; an aberration of minds in which the development of charity is stifled, and who wish to hook it on to some lively emotion. Is it likely that this can be an emo- tion of charity, — pity for a female monster who deserved death a thousand times, as well for the murder of Fualdes as for that of her daughter, whom she sent to the father Bancal, to get her killed ! Behold the beings to whom the Toulousans give lots of alms ! Bless me ! are there not at Toulouse then, as everywhere else, lots of honest poor worthy of compassion ? Doubtless those who gave money to the woman Bancal were not dishonest people, nor were they really charitable people, for they might easily have found better occasions for exercis- ing their liberality. What were they, then, in strict ana- lysis? Searchers after a multiple composite, who wished to satisfy two sentiments of the soul, one of friendship by com- miseration, the other of ambition (branch of pride) by the conceit or the persuasion of having done a brave and gener- ous action, of having given a proof of magnanimity by their indulgence for a she-villain. It is seen by this act that the male and female Toulousans are, as in other places, greatly deprived of real composites, since they seek for such delusive ones. At every step the civilizees fall into all kinds of inconsist- encies in seeking for passions, and especially for the three distributive. What will they not do for a shadow of cabalist ? They engage in a mass of intrigues that are not linked to their personal passions ; had they, like every harmonian, about forty cabals to look after on their own account, they would not be so eager to meddle in the affairs of other people, and make perpetual stories about things that do not concern them ; but in these stories they find the advantage of taking an indirect part in intrigues, and creating a shadow of cabal for want of the reality. It is especially to procure the papillon that they seem to THE MUTILATED AND ABORTIVE PASSIONS. 135 redouble their efforts ; and from the moralists who promise ever netv charms in black broth and virtue, to the economists ^yho promise torrents of riches from their systems, which give birth to legions of beggars, every one in the civilizee world seeks for novelty, and demands it from the savans who pro- mise it, but who, instead of salutary innovations, only know how to perpetuate poverty and cheating. The same illusion in individual affairs. Every one seeks and promises novelty, variations in pleasure ; every one wishes to procure some new diversions in a fete that is given, and does nothing but ape his neighbors ; every one wishes to find some incomparable charms in a love intrigue, and everybody comes at the end of some years to complain of uniformity and the absence of illusions. Thus the cabalist and the papillon are careers promptly exhausted by the civilizees. Most of them have never enjoyed any, and never will. I speak only of those who, being en- gaged in the busy world, have some pretension to enjoy these passions, seek for them, and throw an illusion over shadows of intrigue that they take for realities. Their assemblies must be sadly in want of those ardent intrigues that the well-balanced cabalist produces, for you cannot entertain an evening party for a quarter of an hour without giving them factitious intrigues, cards, or games of blind man's buff and other fooleries, without which you would sink again into a manifest state of ennui, whereas by means of innocent games you succeed in dissimulating or extermi- nating enmd. With what pity those who have true intrigues look upon these distractions ! See a candidate at the moment when the election is announced, and when he plots with his committee- men, try to propose a game of hide and seek or of ombre to him, — what a look of pity he will dart upon you ! See a lover at the moment when, hearing the hour of the appoint- ment strike, he leaves a troop of fine wdts, and goes to find a diversion in the charm of a more real beauty ; if you then propose to him to listen to a tirade or a running fire of puns, with what pity he will view this stingy variation, this abortive 126 THE MUTILATED AND ABORTIVE PASSIONS. papillon, when he finds a real one in a love session that is about to succeed to that of clever wit, of which he has had enough, from which he requires a change, and on which the assembly continues forcibly to feed, for want of choice on some variation that has a real charm. It is therefore certain that every one feeds upon abortive passions or mere semblances of happiness. Proofs of this in good society, where pretended extasies resound on every side, as false as the tears of emotion, and the joyful plaudits Avhere- with the Parisian gazettes are filled when they give an ac- count of a session of the French Academy. I have only spoken of the three distributives, because they are the least known ; everybody can construct for him- self the immense table of the abortive and illusive passions in connection with the nine other passions. A woman cer- tifies and persuades herself that she finds inefl'able delights in devotion and in the virtue of chastity ; but if some mi- racle could remove thirty years from her shoulders and restore her bloom, you would see her instantly neglect the delights of the rosary and of chastity, and find another means of giving charm to her leisure. A moralist who has not a farthing, extols the sweetnesses of philosophy and the happi- ness of despising riches; but let an inheritance of 30,000 francs income drop into his lap, the very next day, our sage, drawn away into festivities, will not recollect one syllable of those fine maxims, of which he drank so freely the night before for want of wine. Without filling pages with the table of our abortive pas- sions, I appeal to the conscience, to the good faith of my readers. In all these pretended charms of civilization, may we not, on strict analysis, cut off one half first and then dis- pute the other? Be it observed, I am not here speaking of the table, nor of love, since they are delights prohibited by morality : I am only speaking of the morally admissible pleasures, such as the love of the country, the delights of thatched cottages, of boiled turnips and black broth, and the sweetness of virtue, of moderation, &c. When we have real pleasures in civilization, as in cases of illicit loves, it is not THE MUTILATED AND ABORTIVE PASSION'S. 127 allowable to mention them. It may consequently be affirmed that amongst the enjoyments extolled and tolerated with us, seven-eighths are simulated and come under the class of the abortive passions. It is thus that the repressive system deceives itself in deceiving the social world, for it ends in reproducing the sem- blance of those pleasures it wishes to proscribe, and in giving by that very fact greater attraction to those it has forbidden. That is only the least wrong it commits ; the chief one is to castrate the noblest passions. CHAPTER III. OF THE PRESSURE OF THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. " Post equitem sedet atra cura." The readers are alarmed at the immensity of good tilings that harmony promises them. To become familiar with these tables, let them reflect, in the first place, on the insuflSciency of the good things of civilization ; this is what I am going to treat in a general dissertation on the pressure of the twelve radical passions. Why are so many individuals whose lot appears enviable, eaten up with ennui even on thrones ? Diocletian and Charles \ . became weary of the sceptre of a vast empire ; the one goes to seek recreations in solitude at Salona, the other seeks them in a monastery where he only finds new anxieties, and from Avliich after a few days he wishes to return. Others less exalted in dignity must a fortiori be unhappy, even at court, where all ambitious people wish to gain admission. " Do you not see," said Madame de Maiutenon, " that I die of ennui in the midst of greatness?" If, therefore, those who have the power, the honors, the riches, fall so frequently into tedium, what must be the lot of the multitude which has neither food enough nor labor, the lot of a father who sees his children lacking the necessaries of life ? Some clever people wish to prove that there is compensa- tion in all things, that a father burdened with a family of children asking for bread, finds in the love of the charter pleasures that indemnify him, and lives as happy as a sybarite; PRESSURE or THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. 129 but if they believe there is compensation every where in the diflferent civilizee conditions, why, at the same time that they maintain this paradox, do they so actively court fortune, and look out for lucrative employments? Why do they not remain at the post where fortune had placed them, and why are they so much elated when a minister gives them a good appointment as the reward of their sophistical writings ? They were then, it seems, less happy the night before in their humble condition, and if they are delighted to attain to for- tune, they ought to confess the unhappiness of those who are deprived of it. An age that listens to such quacks, and patronizes them, can it attain to any discoveries in connection with the passions ? Let us be more frank, and confess that the routine of civilizee life exposes even monarchs themselves to tedium, men whose lot is generally envied ; for no prince is willing to change places with a subject, Avhereas every subject would Avillingly change places with the prince. Civilization is there- fore a state insufficient for the demands of the passions ; it cannot secure for them a complete development, as it can for those of the animals. Hence it comes that they press us and produce tedium, anxiety, atra cura. Each of the twelve has the same property as that of taste or appetite, which stimulates us incessantly until we have provided the means of satisfying it ; and which is not to be lulled by a chapter of Seneca on the contempt of the passions. It is true that the eleven other radical passions are not so pressing as that of the appetite, which gives no quarter ; they are nevertheless eleven stings, whereof the pressure subsists, and makes us unhappy as long as we cannot satisfy them. Our happiness depends, like that of the animals, in satis- fying all the passions that God has given us. No animal appears to feel tedium in its state of freedom ; it is content, and sleeps in perfect peace when it has eaten enough. This calm springs from the animals having such passions only as they can satisfy in their state of freedom. This rule ought to be the same for all beings. God must have proportioned the doses of passions to the means of enjoy- VOL. II. K 130 PRESSURE OF THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. ment ; and yet the very kings, who are the freest of us, still fall into tedium when every one hastens to serve their whims. This is because the dose of our passions that are thought insatiable is in the ratio of the channels of enjoyment, that the state of harmony which is our real aim will open to us. Harmony will satisfy a host of passions, such as transits and others, which cannot have a development in the civilizee state; and, since God has contrived for us these immense enjoy- ments, quite unknown at present, he has necessarily given us the desires that goad us on like so many stings, and which are of unequal activity in persons of different characters. No theory can stop their impulsion. Sometimes three or four radical passions press us together ; it is enough for one to be obstructed for the individual goaded on to fall into unhappi- ness, and even into despair. We feel this truth very well as regards the simple pres- sures that only proceed from one single passion. Every one understands how a young girl in love, whose love is rejected, falls into a mortal pining by this single privation ; and that neither the caresses of a tender mother and a tender granny, nor the sage precepts of Plutarch and of Seneca, give her any real relief. Every one understands perfectly well, in a case of this nature, that humanity is enslaved by the passional pressure ; but this truth, which is marvellously well under- stood in the case of an ordinary and isolated passion, is not conceived by any one in connection with vast pressures, like those of the omnigyne characters, who experience a host of pressures at once, and who have yearnings of an immense stretch. What should we think of a poor wretch, a beggar of omni- gyne character, who were to say : — " I want that I and my children should aspire to the throne of the world ; I want to have thousands of magnificent palaces at my disposal ; I want these thousands of palaces to be distributed over all parts of the globe, and that there should be magnificent roads and carriages to transport me to them ; I want to find in each of these numerous palaces, and every day, a splendid table, bril- liant company, plays, concerts, balls, fetes, &c. ; I want to PRESSURE OF THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. 131 find there oriental luxury, bayaderes, bacchantes, faqniresses, at my disposal ; I want these pleasures, so dangerous at pre- sent, to be quite exempt from all morbific contagion ; I Avant, on alighting at each of these thousand palaces, to find mis- tresses who are passionately fond of me at sight, from sheer moral and personal sympathy, without any prompting of vile interest ; I want to find over the whole globe friends infatu- ated with my fancies, whatever they be, and who yield them- selves to them from pure affinity, applaud me in my caprices, and share them through a disinterested passion. In short, I want to find in my thousands of palaces such varied plea- sures, that at all hours of the day and night I might be so intoxicated with enthusiasm there, that the heart, the mind and the senses should be in perpetual extasy, and that the delights of all sorts should be so varied that it would become impossible to fall, but for a moment, into satiety or tedium." At these words we should think that the beggar who uttered them had lost his wits. Not a bit of it ! his language would be that of supreme wisdom, and denote an omnigyne character in regular development ; for he would experience desires proportioned to the dose of enjoyments that God has in store for the omnigynes, and even for the characters of inferior degree in the mechanism of harmony, where the omnigynes and polygynes of all degrees will have a certainty of finding over the whole globe this ocean of pleasures, and will moreover have exactly the sort of character to enjoy them. They ought therefore to deske them, if attraction is proportional to destinies, and they ought to desire them at the present time, notwithstanding the impossibility of obtain- ing them ; for the characters being invariable and distributed as if we were in harmony, we ought, even at present, to aim after all the goods reserved for harmony, though we should have no hope of obtaining them.^ * This is one of the oversights of Fourier. If the characters are always the same in society, it is only in the same manner that an individual is the same through life. The wants of an individual in infancy are not, however, the same as those of the same individual in adult life, notwithstanding personal dentity.— H. D. K 2 132 PRESSURE OF THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. Accordingly, all the remoDstrances of morality do not succeed in eradicating gigantic ambitions, desires, dreams of great fortune, from the mind of the people. They run to seek them, and try their luck in the lottery, though its jug- glery has been explained to them. In short, they are every where inclined to these illusions of grandeur, commonly called day dreams, foolish day dreams ; but which, on the contrary, are wise day dreams, since they are co-ordinate with the future effects of attraction. We do not depart from the limits of wisdom as long as we only desire the good that is in store for us. When a ship is in want of provisions and of water, when it is reduced to meagre allowance of bad biscuit and foul water, will it be said that the captain and the rich passengers are mad in sighing for a good table well stored with luxuries ? Their longing is very excusable, for it is certain that, once arrived in port, they will have this good cheer they covet. Such is our common situation. The civilizee and barbarian state is a painful voyage that will end when we choose, and since on issuing from it we are destined to enjoy the im- mensity of riches and of pleasures in harmony, need we wonder that we covet them even now ? The desire, far from being unruly, comes under the class of causes proportional to effects ; the pressure of our passions ought to be proportional to the destinies that are in store for us in harmony. Would not the Creator be in contradiction with himself, and an absurd mechanician if, while dooming us to immense plea- sures, he had given us moderate desires ? If there is univer- sality in his providence and economy of springs, he must have confined our desires to the necessary dose, and have provided the means of satisfying every desire that he hath given us. The theory that I bring forward proves that he has fulfilled these two conditions ; it justifies the pretended insatiability of our passions, that impatience of pleasures which torments the sovereigns to such au extent, that Caesar arrived at the empire of the world only finds there satiety, and exclaims : — " Is it only that ?" Caesar is right not to be satisfied, since harmony, for which we are destined, reserves for the least among us a PRESSURE OF THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. 133 great many more enjoyments than Csesar found on the throne of the worldj where he ended by perishing miserably^ after wielding a power whereof he himself deplored the hol- lowness. Let us infer from these remarks a fixed principle respect- ing the pressure of the twelve radical passions and respecting the correctness of the operations of nature in subjecting us to this pressure, frequently confined to a single sting, but equally correct when she presses us with all the stings at once, as happens in the polygyne characters of high degrees, who wish not only to enjoy the full development of the twelve radicals, but to extend these developments to the omnimodal combinations, or those of the ^Y X) direct and inverse pivotals of the eighth degree, in which each passion extends its empire over the whole human race, and causes the entire earth to intervene in satiating its immense desires ; an effect very opposite to those theories that wish to show us happiness on a table furnished with black broth and boiled turnips ! Consequently to lead vis to happiness a state of things is required that secures the means of satisfying not only the dominants of each individual, but the alternating pressures of the dominants, the accidental pressures of the nou- dominants. It is especially in the civilizee order that the pressure makes itself felt, because a civilizee is already more exposed than a barbarian to the influence of the three distributives, which require vast pleasures with numerous and varied refine- ments. Our passions are comparable to a tree that develops itself more or less according to the nature of the soils. Most of the passions have but little development in savageism ; they have more among the barbarians of the superior class, and still more among the civilizees ;^ especially in the case of those who have several of the distributives as dominants, witness Julius Caesar, who was strongly endowed with papillon and cabalist. Accordingly his activity was prodigious ; the want * Here Fourier admits the principle of progressive development he partly overlooked, a little while ago. — H. D. 134 PRESSURE OF THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. of new events agitated liim without intermission and made him find satiety in the most brilliant successes, even in the advent to the empire. This impatience denotes the pressure of the papillon, or eleventh passion, which is insatiable of varieties. It was equally active in Buonaparte. These two men were satisfied with nothing, or at all events their con- tentment was only a flash of happiness, troubled the instant after by new desires. The greater number of restless characters would find it very hard to explain these longings that agitate them ; they are themselves so completely deceived about them, that when they obtain a desired good, their ambition goes on increasing; and after a dozen or fifteen lucky hits, they are more than ever eaten up with cupidity or other stings of passion and desire. They will only get a clear insight into this passional disorder after having seen the variety and the immensity of the enjoyments that harmony reserves for us. Some idea of it has been given in the analysis of the transits, which are a branch of yet unknown delights ; their portraiture shews that Voltaire was greatly deceived when he said, — " On ne peut desirer ce qu'on ne connait pas."* The assertion is false as applies to all the polygyne cha- racters, who have a distributive among their dominants. They have all, from the greatest to the least, the involuntary desire of transits which they do not meet with in civilization, though this society strongly awakens their desire. A savage is in fact happier, because he lives in an order of things that encourages apathy, the torpor of the soul ; while civilization, strongly stimulating the three distributives without giving any means of satisfying them in transits, condemns the major part of great characters, whose vast desires can find no vent, to a permanent restlessness. This civilization is only suited to souls steeped in mediocrity and marital pettiness ; these common characters have no need of the refinements of pleasure, called transits or potential distributives, and as this desire exists in transcendent characters alone, philosophy has * " Wc cannot desire that which we do not know." PRESSURE OF THE TWELVE RADICAL PASSIONS. 135 inferred from it that such desires are vices deserving of re- pression^ because they are not found in the majority of shop- keepers and artizans. This is reasoning in the same way as if you were to say that Saturn is not deserving of attention, because it is the only annular or belted planet ; it is on this very account that it is the most deserving of our observations. These false principles, having prevented all study on the subject of the transits and the three distributive passions that are their germs, men have still less thought of studying the passion of unityism, which is the supreme degree of passional development, of which we are about to sketch out the analysis. CHAPTER IV. OF THE FOCAL PASSION, CALLED UNITYISM.— SUBLIMITY OF THIS PASSION. We are come to the passion that may be named the Spirit of God. No doubt each of the twelve is of divine essence and of divine emanation, but since unityism, M, is a quintessence of each of the twelve, from which it only extracts the most subtle portion, the two accords XY, Xx> o^ of the eighth degree, it is truly in this passion that you may perceive the Divine Spirit, since it joins together the most powerful accords that are found in each of the gamuts. Respecting this expression Divine Spirit, let us not confine ourselves to vague definitions. Men have reasoned in such a contradictory manner about it, that it is requisite to point out fixedly what must be understood by Divine Spirit. Certain fanatics fenergoumenoij , like Odin and the priests of Scandinavia, Gaul, Yauris, Mexico, and Ashantee, have made of God a ferocious being who takes pleasure in our tor- tures, and who wishes to see his altars bathed with the blood of human victims. Every one will agree that this character of butcher is in nowise the character of God. But if God doth not wish to torture in this world, he wishes therefore to make us happy; and if he wishes our happiness, he must wish for the happiness of all, for he is the common Father of all and not of some privileged few, who think that they have the right to damn the ninety-nine hundredths of the human race. God does not sanction these lists of proscription ; he THE rOCAL PASSIOX, CALLED UNITYISM. 187 wishes the general well-being. He makes no distinction either of peoples, or of worship; he hath prepared for us channels of happiness, but for the whole and entire great family. Yet on examining our passions, which are the springs of social happiness or unhappiness, one is tempted to think at the first glance that they only tend to individual happiness, and that they do not co-operate in any respect in the general good. It may be said even that each passion in isolation is stricken with this vice ; that friendship, love, ambition, pa- rentage, breathe nothing but selfishness, lead only to anti- philanthropic ties, in which certain individuals make a coali- tion against the good of the mass : such an efl'ect is nothing else than an illiberal coalition. Now if the twelve springs, separately considered, are the roots of partial selfishness, their collective action can only produce universal selfishness, as it is seen in our civilizee and barbarian relations. Does it follow that God wishes to lead us to this vile result? No. The secret of this enigma is, that we have only considered the springs of low degree in the passions, the accords of the second, third, fourth, fifth, which tend in every direction to egoism ; whereas the high accords, and amongst others the eighth, tend only to universal philanthropy, in the plan of which they cause the inferior accords to intervene. Let us enter on some details respecting this theme, from which it will be inferred that the intentions attributed to the Divine Spirit, — the intentions of unity, of generosity, of general philanthropy, — can only be realized by means of the accords of the eighth, which engender the passion unity ism. Let us first judge of it by a passion that serves as pivot to our social system; I mean familism. In its first degree, that comprises the children sprung from one husband by one single wife, it is the source of the most odious egoism. No household attempts to aid any but itself alone ; you cannot call upon it for its collateral branches or accessory and secon- dary accords. Nevertheless the afi'ective ties, — friendship, love, ambition, familism, — were only invented by God for the 138 THE FOCAL PASSION^ CALLED UNITYISM. purpose of uniting tlie whole body of the human race, but they can only establish unity in it by the high accords, 8 > Minor or &, Feminine a fi '% Choirs. 3 3 i •i 1 Mars 17. 18^ l9i2C §21 °22 The Female O ID Gymi ouba( 1 Infants. en ^ Jupiter. 31 The Female Reverends. f Saturn. 14. The Male Venerables. 7.8.9. 10.11. 12.13^:16. Proteus. The Male Patriarchs. <■! 23.24.25.26.27.28.29=32. Sappho. The Female Patriarchs. Herschel. 30. The Female Venerables. Sun >■• aicK ana mnrm. ;n Jupiter and f J c , i 2. Ditto. n^ ,_ f 2. Absent ) ,t . Satui-n. \ Males > ,, n- \ J Members. -' 3. Ditto. 4 (travelhng) S -^ 1 T->:i-i„ -^ ?t. Occasional helns. ] '\ 1 Ditto 3. Occasional helps. Between Saturn and / ' ' ^ c- ^ ^ ■ /i „ , , > 2. Ditto. ^ 1- Sick and infirm. Herschel. > ^ / 2. Absent ) „ , 6. Ditto. Females ^ (travelling) \ Members. 3. Occasioned helps. This is a simple one-sided view of Fourier's ideal order. His practical division is not masculine and feminine, but major and minor, by which he means masculine predominance and feminine predominance. He supposes each planet and each group to be of both sexes ; major groups containing two-thirds of the male sex and one-third of the female ; minor groups, two-thirds female and one-third male. Each solar system is, in his conception, a sidereal township or a city of stars in the empire of a universe, itself a part only of a higher unit in the polyversal order of the immeasurable finite. The ages here given are not exactly those of Fourier, but near approximations, to avoid fractions. — H. D, 270 ANALOGY FROM THE AROMAL SYSTEM. for them to transact business through the medium of the moon-bearer, whose aromal threads, being much stronger, are better adapted to the transmission of aromas ; accordingly these small stars are fatigued when they are obliged to sepa- rate from the moon-bearer, and place themselves in direct communication with the sun for the emission and reception of their respective aromas. The asteroides, Juno, Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta, are greatly inconvenienced by this state of things. As for the six stars, A B C, D E F, they carry on business through the medium of Jupiter and Saturn. Mer- cury alone is but little injured by his loneliness, because he is so near the sun. This is a distinguished favor for Mercury, who is the favorite of the system, and equals in rank the moon-bearers and ambiguous planets ; but it would be cramp- ing the aromal operations of the sun to encumber it with the neighborhood of petty planets : and thence it has been found necessary to place behind Mars our four satellites, which are very impatient to come and form a group with our globe, and to enjoy the faculty of correspondence through its medium. The four ambiguous planets, though isolated, are of a very vigorous species, and as well suited as the moon-bearers to carry on a direct correspondence with the sun. The mixed order enjoys high consideration and very valuable faculties in the whole system of Nature. Though in a phalanx of passional harmony the four choirs of the fourteenth and fifteenth ages, are the tutors and me- diators of the twenty-four choirs of active harmony, this does not apply to the management of property. A man of the twelfth and thirteenth ages has as much capacity as he of the sixteenth in affairs of this nature; moreover, as fraud does not exist in harmony, the child of the second age has his property as well managed as those of a grown-up man. The superintendence with which the four cardinal choirs of the fourteenth and fifteenth ages are engaged collectively, is an entirely free direction, reposing on the spontaneous supply and demand of knowledge and experience. It is in this sense only that the four choirs of the fourteenth and fifteenth ages are tutors of the twenty-four others, as the ANALOGY FROM THE AROMAL SYSTEM. 271 four planets of more highly-refined aroma are tutors of those of low degree. It is a tutorship for the purpose of ser\ang and not of enslaving the subalterns, as invariably happens in civilization. It is an entirely impassioned tie, as well in the case of the planets, as in the choirs of a phalanx ; a tie that is neither founded on right nor on duty, but on the charms of attraction, of interest and of gratitude. Amongst the twenty-four lunar planets, as well as amongst the twenty-four choirs of the major and the minor orders, numbers 2 to 13, and 18 to 29, there are two that are in a state of harmonic duplicity or ambiguity, both in their func- tions and in their subdivisions. This couple is composed of the fifth choirs of octave numbered 6 in major, 22 in minor, and of the fifth moons of octaves which are Mercury in the major octave, and Hebe in the minor. Mercury is ambi- guous through its faculty of being a simple satellite that ought to group itself with the little cardinal named the Earth, and yet to enjoy an aromal influence that may be described as superior to that of the great moon-bearing planets. In the same way, you may often see at court a favorite, who without holding any legal rank, obtains even more influence than the minister, — a very unjust efi'ect in civilization, but one very necessary for the general mechanism of harmony. The reader will judge of this in the chapters on the passion of favoritism, the inverse focus >\\(>r, who 320 TYPICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERS. pivot upon four affectuous and two distributive passions^ arc the most seductive of the whole octave ; one would think them to he of a more than human nature. Julius Caesar and Alcibiades were two heptagynes. They are souls of a mar- vellous flexibility^ and have an infinite aptitude for all sorts of studies and of functions. Nature only produces a couple of them in 9j728 individuals; they govern twelve commu- nities. The omnigynes are the most rare and the most useful notes, though less seductive than the heptagynes ; they have too many functions to fulfil to be able to lay stress from pre- ference on the beautiful shades of character. They have, on the contrary, developments that are bizarre and inherent in their property of being steered by seven united dominants : hence arises in their case the superdominant unityism, pro- ducing effects that are very strange, and more valuable than brilliant. They can by no means reconcile themselves with the ci\dlizee order, which thwarts their development in every direction. Nature only gives one couple of them for a union of phalanges containing 29,222 persons : none of them have ever been seen in the eminent posts of civilization. This is not surprizing, considering the extreme rareness of the omni- gyne character, which among the common people is completely kept under and disguised. It would often be disguised even on thrones, and since it is composed, in a great measure, of apparent oddities, bizarreries, it has still less vent among women than among men, because they have less liberty. I have cited heptagynes, or seventh degrees, like Ceesar ; as for the omnigynes, there are none such that are known. This very extraordinary character will deserve a special chapter, as well as the monogyncs, whom I am about to define more at length. In pointing out the whole of the dominants of a poligyne, I shall use generically the name of dominative. Thus to designate the prevailing characteristic of the hepta- gynes, Csesar and Alcibiades, I shall say : The dominative of Csesar consists of the seven radical animic passions, minus the composite, and that of Alcibiades consist in these seven, minus parentism. TYPICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERS. 321 RANKS AND TITLES OF THE PASSIONS IN THE INDIVIDUAL. The twelve passions^ like the citizens of a state^ have ranks of all degrees^ the table of which however will be less overloaded than that of our social functions, which in each genus often admit as many as twelve graduated species. If you take a regiment, you will find there colonel, sub-colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, ensign, serjeaut, orderly, corporal, and many other ranks. You will also find numerous degrees in the judicature, and in all other functions. Consequently it will not overbiu^den the memory of the reader if we enter- tain him with dominant, sub-dominant, tonic, super-tonic, sub-tonic passions, &c., which I shall only define as they are wanted ; and when I have defined a certain number of them, I shall recapitulate these definitions in order to present them in good order. We shall remark, in the first place, the st/pe7'-tomc or favorite tonic; it is an efiect of passion that takes place among all the polygynes, and which you would take at the first glance for an exclusive dominant. Yet if they have several, they cannot have an exclusive one. Let us strengthen this remark by some examples. Hemy IV. and J. J. Rousseau are two polygynes of the fourth and fifth degrees ; but the degree little matters. Their character displays in the midst of the noble passions one that seems dominant. With Henry IV., it is honor in the sense of uprightness, loyalty ; for this word honor has many accep- tations, respecting which we must come to an understanding. With J. J. Rousseau it is a kind of political misanthropy, — a rebellion that may be called indomitable. These two passions are shades of the gamut of ambition ; they are therefore not dominants with Henry and Rousseau, who have each of them ambition among their dominants. Nevertheless these two shades are the coloring of their characters ; they are a var- nish thrown over the whole of the picture to heighten its efiiect. Thus each polygyne has among his tonics a favorite that is married with all the dominants. It is a tonic raised VOL. II. Y 322 TYPICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CHAKACTERS. to the second power, wliicli I shall name super-tonic, at the head of the company, and serving as a ruling hue or coloring without prejudice to the influence of the different dominants : such is the super-tonic or favorite tonic ; it reigns in all the polygynes, and serves to distinguish them into varieties. I do not speak here of the sub-tonic nor of the super- dominants and sub-dominants, since I have announced that I shall only bring definitions forward as they are called for."^ A function most important to remark is that of co- efficients. These are the four passions that reign by degrees in the train of the dominant. When it is said that an omnigyne develops the contrasted passions in the eighth degree ; that a heptagyne develops them in the seventh degree ; a hexagyne on the sixth ; this does not imply that they give this enduring and regular vent to all of them. The omnigyne is the man who, in the eighth degree, figures in the greatest number of series and categories, but he figures in others only in the seventh or in the sixth, &c., and even in the first. The heptagyne is the man who carries on the greatest number of functions in the seventh degree, and similarly for the others : no degree excludes you from use in other degrees. A monogyne may figure in mo- nogyny, but if he only plays this part in a single effect of passions, and if everywhere else he is commonly in the first degree, very rarely in the second, third, fourth, he can only be classed in the degree where he finds his most numerous delights. It is almost useless to describe this graduated balance in the development of the monogynes ; each of them requires to be employed in divers functions : — A monogyne of the fifth degree, as relates to his dominant, of the fourth degree, as to his first co-efficient, of the third degree, as to his second co-efficient, of the second degree, as to his third co-efficient, of the first degree, as to his fourth co-efficient. He must moreover be a polygyne in some degrees, owing to the connective unity of system. * (Marginal Note of Fourier.) — An article is required that should designate them in detail, and better than in the passage above. TYPICAL DISTRIBUTION OP CHARACTERS. 323 A polygyue in like manner requires^ in order to be ba- lanced, to act transitionally in some simple degrees or mono- gynies. Without dovetailings and gradations, there would be no link in the passional mechanism. If all the functions of pentagyny were only applicable to a single couple in the 144 scries, the death of this couple or of one of its members would strangely inconvenience the phalanx. It is necessary that the different employments should relieve each other; thus each note intervenes by an increasing and decreasing grada- tion in the employments of degrees differing from its own. In a vortex or phalanx every one is known and classed in his natural rank ; the most powerful monarch may belong to the 576 monogynes, who are passional plebeians ; he will nevertheless enjoy the throne of the world, but in the social relations of the vortex he will be freely classed in the columns of the passional multitude, composed of the 48 gamuts of monogynes ; he will not be offended by it, for the characters of each degree, ha\ing very useful functions in harmony, are unanimously of opinion that their degree is the happiest. The monogynes have the numerical majority in their favor; they are 576, who boast of their performance against 130 polygynes and 104 mixts. Each of the three classes is happy in its degrees. If the monogynes have the disadvantage as regards rank, they have the advantage of number, and also that of importance in divers functions ; thus all is balanced. Besides it is known that this proportion of each character is required, and, far from disputing about the rank of the degrees, every one confines himself to admii'ing their recip- rocal adaptation, and the just proportion with which God has distributed them.* * I will here observe, for the information of those who cannot relish this idea of being classed as monogynes, &c., that the whole of Fourier's analysis of passions and of characters is fanciful and incomplete in theory, though very luminous and interesting in details of observation and in grapliic definitions. Some characters are much more active and intelligent than others, but their numbers and varieties are not so limited and easy to determine as Fourier would fain persuade us. The number twelve is not the basis of the scale of passions, Y 2 324 TYPICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CHARACTERS. The characters develop themselves gradually. A penta- gyne -will seem^ in his first years, to be only a digyne, after- wards a trigyne, a tetragyne, and so on : the two degrees, trigyne and hexagyne, which pivot principally on the distri- butives, are the easiest to recognize in early childhood. Before puberty it is impossible to do more than get a glimpse of the future developments of a character, since it is deprived of two cardinal passions, love and paternalism, which it can- not experience. Hence it comes that there are many charac- ters of an incomplete title among children. It is after puberty that doubtful characters are seen to develop themselves ; when it has reached that age, a character can neither be classed by favor nor by error above or below its rank ; for it would find tedium out of its natural place, and, being no longer under the influence of attraction, it would hinder and derange the evolution at the same time that it obstructed itself. Hence it comes that no man can desire nor accept a rank in the scale of characters, before experiencing the passions neces- sary to perform the functions of that rank. If men began to class the characters as early as civiliza- tion, it would be a great advantage at the opening of har- mony, since you could from the outset form communities or vortices with great regularity; whereas otherwise false proportions will often be found in them. For example, in- stead of 96 digynes and 24 trigynes, it will not be unusual to see a vortex present at the outset of 90 digynes and 30 tri- gynes, which wiU cause a pernicious hindrance, and take some time to remedy ; for time will be required to prove the character of each one, to find and initiate the substitutes provided by exchange. nor are dominant and tonic feelings and impulsions constantly the same in every individual. The whole theory of ruling passions and delights will have to be ■ derived from other and more perfect observations of man's nature. — H.D. CHAPTER V. DEFINITION OF THE MONOGYNES OF THE THREE ORDERS. The monogynes form the great number, the immense majo- rity, comprising more than two thirds of the human species, and are, like those of the other classes, perverted by ci^iliza- tion, where every character becomes more or less a moral masquerade. The monogynes, the 576 characters with a single dominant, are, as I have said already, the passional populace. They subordinate all their conduct to the influ- ence of a single passion ; the other passions only dominate with them in appearance, in a graduated and subordinated influence, and not as a constant rule. Let us take, for ex- ample, a melomaniac or a monogjTie of hearing ; he will love music above every thing, he will only think about musicians; he will choose a musician for his wife, and bestow his daugh- ter on a musician ; the eleven other passions will only be felt at intervals in his case, and will only have a temporary influ- ence subordinate to musical intrigues ; he will have his four co-efficients, but the strongest, the sub-dominant, will be far from balancing the musical or melomania. Another has an exclusive leaning towards good living, and makes it the prin- cipal rule of his actions. He is a monogyne with taste as pivot, and taste as dominant, a character steered by taste. I shall employ indifferently these three significations. The monogynes are the only characters that have one of the five sensual passions as an exclusive dominant. In all the compound or polygyne characters, numbers 2 to 8 in the 326 DEFINITION OF THE MONOGYNES table^ the only dominants are the seven primitives, whereof four are affectives and three distributives. I do not mean to say that a character of high degree cannot be influenced by a sensual passion like good cheer, but it will give to it noble forms, he will know how to associate it with honor, friendship, amour-propre, or some other spring of the domain of the seven primitives; in short he will only employ it as sub- dominant, and far from slaAdng basely to this sensual pleasure which is dear to him, he will adhere to every measure or intrigue that can throw a gloss over this pleasure, and subject it in appearance to one of the seven primitives by which it will be ruled. Lucullus may be very fond of good cheer, but in his case this penchant is ennobled by his munificence, by the brilliant choice of the friends whom he invites to his banquets. In this case the passion for good cheer becomes accessory to a nobler impulse, such as honor or friendship. Thus Lucullus, though refined in gastronomy, will only exer- cise this passion as a subdominant, subject to two, three, or four spiritual dominants. And hence it comes that the sensuals only reign as sub- dominants in every polygyne character : the sensual pleasure of love is always, in their case, subordinated to illusion or spiritual love, whereas in a monogyne of touch, " it is," saith llegnard, " the brutal part that carries the day over the sensi- tive or sentimental, and which scandalously sufiers the supe- riority of the material pleasure to be seen through." Let us continue the examination in connection with gormandism more compatible with details. Vitellius, in his trivial and coarse gormandism, had none of the noble bearing of Lucullus. He is a sot, a glutton, who after a copious repast, takes a vomit in order to dine a second time. He is a monogyne with the dominant of taste and the tonic of sottishuess, in whom the passion displays itself in odious colors. Apicius is another monogyne of the same dominant, but with the tonic of gormandism. He is an en- lightened, honorable, and even majestic 1Q2 Ofparentism 32 Of love 64- Monogynes with distributive dominants. Of composite 32 -j Ofpapilloa 48 M44 Ofcabalist 64 J 576 Each of these twelve divisions admits four subdivisions of characters ; for example, the sixty-four monogynes with the cabalist as pivot may be classed in a sketch into four series or gamuts of passional shades which will be composed : — In the major or masculine gamut of ... 21 men In the minor or feminine gamut of .... 20 women In the hyperneuter gamut of 12 boys In the hyponeuter gamut of 11 girls 64 Tlie functions of a social body certainly imply to some extent the passions and the characters of those who are to exercise them, but this indication is not sufficient to solve the difficulty, and if it were, we have no proof that Fourier had gained a perfect knowledge of these functions. His scale of the passions being incomplete, the series of characters he derives from calculating ruling passions and attractions is imaginary to a great extent. The facts he has observed, however, are important and instructive, and his method, though defective, is ingenious and suggestive. When I have published my analysis of the organs of the human body, the faculties of the mind, and the passions of the soul, this calculus of human cha- racters and social functions given by Fourier will be found wider of the mark than he surmised. — H. D. VOL. II. Z 338 DEFINITION OF THE MONOGYNES. In each of these gamuts of characters you will distinguish the three degrees : — Ascending cabalist. — Frank, impatient shades of character. Medium cabalist. — Mixed shades of character. Descending cabalist. — Prudent and astute shades of character. I do not dwell on these details, which are not necessary for my readers, who are all novices in this line. An over minute exactness would lead them astray, instead of instruct- ing them, and this chapter is only meant to shew them that I abridge considerably, to facilitate their first studies in attraction. INTERMEDIATE CHAPTER. THE CONTRADICTION OP MORALITY IN THE MANAGEMENT OF THE MONOGYNE CHARACTERS. Our common aim is happiness; consequently morality, to sell its little curiosities, its 100,000 volumes, persuades us that it labors for our happiness, and that it knows the means of procuring it. I have already confuted this pretension of the moralists in describing a day of happiness, and it is clear that their theories will not lead us to such a state ; but since the vulgar is infatuated in favor of these sirens, yclept poli- tical and moral sciences, we must shew up their jugglery in different aspects, refute it in twenty ways, each of which will be more or less intelligent to different minds. A certain proof, convincing to one man, seems insufficient in the eyes of another, we must therefore present them in great variety to unseal all eyes. We are going to examine the happiness promised by mo- rality : to examine it in connection with its adaptation to the 810 characters, and to prove that thus science, far from being able to do anything in fiivor of happiness, tends only by a sort of fatality that is common to it, to direct us incessantly in opposition to the ways of happiness. Here the outline of the problem is very limited, and suited to minds that do not like vast speculations. This view treats of general happiness by application to 810 persons only, leaving aside vast plans respecting the government of the nations. We are only treating of a small society of 810 z 2 340 CONTRADICTION OF MORALITY persons ; by making it happy, we shall have secured the hap- piness of the entire world, since the human race is but a repetition of these 810 characters, which in changing their varieties do not change their special types, and which it is proposed to assemble into an integral soul, developing all its attractions according to the principles we have expounded. It has been seen that the characters are divided into three classes, namely, 576 monogynes, 130 polygynes, and 104 mixts. We have not to speculate on this third class, for the happiness of the two first is a guarantee of that of the mixts, which participate in the functions of both the other classes. Let us first treat of the monogyne class, or passional popu- lace, well deserving of attention, inasmuch as it forms the: immense majority; and secondly, of the 130 polygynes, whereof we shall not be able to speak till after having ex- j plained their use, in the section on the sympathies ; we shall therefore be confined, in this intermediate chapter, to the in- terests of the monogynes. Let us see if philosophy goes to work judiciously to direct them to happiness. It wishes, in the first place, to give them the torch of reason as a guide ; but even supposing that the laws of this voluminous reason of 400,000 volumes were precisely deter- mined ; that its oracles, which have always a double mean- ing, like those of Delphi, could be at last brought to a fixed code ; that it were possible to reconcile the old science, which requires the contempt of riches and the love of truth, with the modern science, which requires the love of riches, of trade, and consequently the practice of lying : supposing, I say, that men succeeded in fulfilling all the conditions, and in fixing at last the laws of this pretended reason, there would still remain the fact that the 576 monogynes have the pro- perty of listening to no reasoning, when you stumble against their exclusive dominant. Nature has given them only one passion as a compass ; they stick to it with desperation ; every other save the sub-dominant having but a feeble influence on happiness. There is the same difference between the poly- gynes and the monogynes as between parents who are pro- vided with four or five children and those who are reduced to IN THE MONOGYNE CHARACTERS. 341 a siugle one. If you take away from the former one of their children, for marriage or some distant business, they have still a support in the others ; but if you take their only child from the second, it would be the consummation of their misery. In vain will you promise them that he will be happy elsewhere ; they have only him for the pivot of their affection, — they could not resolve to part with him. Of this nature are the 576 monogynes ; they have only one dominant passion, the development of which is the only pledge of their contentment ; they will never listen to fine discourses that advise them to deprive themselves of their chief delights. Go and say to the two monogynes, Apicius and Silenus, that reason forbids one to love good cheer and good wine ; advise them to read through your 400,000 volumes of reason to shape themselves into the contempt of wine and of the table. They will take you for a madman, in spite of your diploma as an oracle of reason ; so impossible it is to detach a mono- gyne from the dominant spring of his character : yet such is the object of morality. If morality sees a monogyne of am- bition, who only dreams of cupidity and conquest, it wants to teach him to despise gold and grandeur ; it wants to attempt a similar metamorphosis in the case of the twelve genera of monogynes ; it only gives quarter to those of parentism, who love a family life ; and we shall see farther on that it is the exception itself which condemns the rule. It is much more easy to induce the polygynes to listen to {I do not say relish) morality. These, having several domi- nants, are little moved when one of them is wounded ; they have others for a refuge. Declaim a fine sermon against am- bition before Csesar, he will appear to approve you, though no morality can curb his measureless ambition. Though shew- ing some respect for your advice, he will not be disposed to follow it. Here is the secret of his apparent docility. Csesar has six passions for his dominants, namely, the four affectuous and two distributives,' — the alternating and the cabalist. He is only deficient in one of the seven pri- maries — the composite — as a dominant ; accordingly he has little enthusiasm. He shines on all occasions by his sang 342 CONTRADICTION OF MORALITY froid ; he has for super-tonic the thirst for grandeur, for supreme power, one of the shades of the gamut of ambition. He is not on that account insensible to the other noble shades of the passion, such as self-respect ; and if you retail to him a sermon against his super-tonic, he listens to it from partiality to oratory ; the moralist can obtain in his case a moment of triumph as an orator, but by no means as a reformer, and perhaps on leaving the place Csesar will order the passage of the Rubicon. Thus those alone give a fair hearing to morality, who are not willing to follow it ; it is only attended to by the 130 polygynes, who lend an ear to it without results; it also succeeds with a few of the mixts. These cameleons are of all opinions, or contradict them all, for certain mixts of the ascending shades, are contradictory spirits, or pretend to be so ; but in the mass of the passional populace, in the 576 monogj'nes, who seem to belong to the class that needs correction, since they suit themselves exclu- sively with one passion, morality finds no disciple for its principles of repression. If some monogynes, those of parentism, are an exception, and seem to bow to its law, it is because it flatters their dominant. They like in it, not the dogma of repression, but the incense that it lavishes on the development of their cha- racter, entirely addicted to family and household pleasures ; morality in their case plumes itself on an influence Avhich is only base flattery, the encouragement of the passion ; and it is necessary for the happiness of the eleven other kinds of monogynes, to find a means of giving a similar vent to their dominant. Morality condemns itself in approving one of the twelve genera of monogynes; it is the consecration of the oppression and the unhappiness of the eleven other genera, and it is denouncing civilization, which only satisfies one genus out of twelve. It is evident that the eleven others are unhappy. To arrive at happiness, says morality, they must change and become like those with the title of parentism. Ah ! but can they ? God has given them twelve kinds of indelible and immutable characters, and this state of things imposes on the IN THE MONOGYNB CHARACTERS. 343 philosophers^ as the condition of social happiness^ the inven- tion of an order proper to admit the twelve developments of monogyny, as civilization admits that of one only, which is still very far from having complete satisfaction ; for if we pass in review the fathers of family, Ave shall see many more unhappy than satisfied ; almost all complain of having founded sadly disappointed hopes on the affection and the good con- duct of their children. Thus the happiness that it permits to the monogynes is reduced to the approval of the passional development of a twelfth part amongst them, but by no means to the securing of this full development of familism, a thing almost impossible without fortune, the Avant of which reduces family and domestic pleasures to a very trifle, if it does not change domestic life into a long and continuous state of suffering. The case is the same with the other monogynes. Even should morality come to tolerate them, in conformity with its privilege of changing system whenever it thinks fit, yet it would not give them the means of development. Of what consequence is it to a monogyne of hearing, a melomaniac, that morality approves or forbids his mania for concerts ? If it does not give him the means of frequenting them, he will be deprived and unhappy, even in the case of tolerance being granted to his passion. To sum up, morality has three conditions to fulfil in order to lead the tw'elve classes of civilizee monogynes to happiness; to grant full swing or licence of development to the eleven passions ; to approve, in that of amlntion, the plenitude of cupidity; in that of touch, the plenitude of lubricity; in that of friendship, the plenitude of being duped, or of deference to intriguers. In the next place, it will have to open to these eleven orders of monogynes eleven difterent channels for arriving at fortune, since all have need to follow a channel suited to their dominant. Lastly, it has also to open up to those of parentism, whose development is already tolerated, a twelfth way to fortune, whereof they stand no less in need than the eleven others ; for it is a sorry happi- 344 CONTRADICTION OF MORALITY ness^ that of a household without money, reduced to live on love and virtues; and yet such households compose the greatest number. Here is a hard task given to morality to raise the mono- gynes to happiness, and let it not deceive itself about the urgent necessity of fulfilling it ; for there is no happiness for the human race, if we do not first secure that of the mono- gynes, who form more than two-thirds of humanity. Let us here remark the illusion of the moral principles, the falsity of those which are the most in credit, such as that of keeping under one's passions, of keeping up a state of war against them. If the precept were general, if it proscribed all the passions, one might believe in the sincerity of the teachers ; but they begin by excepting from among the twelve monogyne characters, that which is ruled by parentism. Here then is one that is dispensed from warring against itself; that is to say, that God, who has created the mono- gynes, is absurd in the eleven-twelfths of his works, and that He has only shewn wisdom in one-twelfth of them. If it were otherwise, if it were admitted that God ha^ wisely created and distributed the twelve orders of monogynes, this would be to infer that morality which blames eleven and tolerates one, has only one-twelfth proportion of good sense in its opinions. Now, it is of course better to give the lie to God, than to the philosophers in this controversy. If the honor of God prevailed, these learned gentlemen might take oflPence, and withdraw from God the brevet of existence which they granted him in 1794, through the intercession of Robes- pierre ; and it is for the interest of God himself that the dis- cussion should be sent to sleep. It is quite necessary, so they tell us, to keep under the passions that are mischievous to society. If you do not curb these monogynes, who are blindly enslaved to an exclusive dominant, they transform the noblest passions into vices. The man who is endowed with friendship will be the dupe of twenty intriguers, who, under the mask of friendship, will plunder him, and ruin both him and his children ; and those IN THE MONOGYNE CHAUACTERS. 345 with the other titles, like Vitellius, will cause much greater disorders. But how is it that you philosophers, inflated with pretensions in social policy cannot invent any other system of society than that which, out of twelve passions, condemns eleven ? If they are really vicious in exclusive dominance, it would be necessary then to make another race of men that would not be subject to these dominances ; or, if you cannot do this, you must invent a society which suits itself to this invariable distribution of the characters, whereof 576 out of 810 have the property of an exclusive dominant. How great is your inconsistency to approve of a passion, such as parentism, when it is adapted to a social order of any kind whatever. That is to infer that every passional spring is good when it is the security of a society. We may argue from this to prove to you tliat the twelve passions deserve general protection, and this is the way in which we shall reason : — Amongst you, O civilizees ! parentism ruling in exclusive development is judged praiseworthy, because it accords with the civilizee regime ; but at a few paces from your ciAdlizee countries, and from Morocco to Pekin, parentism is no longer praiseworthy ; the system of seraglios and eunuchs, with the sale of women, the custom of separating mothers from their male children when nine years old, leaves no de- velopment for parentism, for the enjoyments of home and of the family; the only one that remains is for masculine tactism, or the passion of the pleasures of touch. Here then we have this second passion, tactism or lubricity, declared good, since it is the prop of a society more numerously organised upon our globe than civilization. A similar motive militates in favour of ambition, rapine ; it adapts itself very well to the social system of the Tartars, of the Bedouins and of those petty kings of the interior of Africa, who take the pompous title of great robbers and great sorcerers.^ Here * A geographer, IMaltebrun, has joked a certain African petty king about this honest title of great robber, on which he plumes himself. The criticism of the geographer proves that this petty king is only a petty robber ; for if he were really and truly great in this line, nobody would have thought tit to rail at him in civilization, where neither justice nor opinion have any weight against those who 346 CONTRADICTION OF MORALITY then are three passions declared to be good, since they suit some sort of society. If we only take the trouble to run over the map of the world and consult the annals of the globe, we shall find a sufficiency of present or past societies, that will furnish a similar motive for pronouncing successively the twelve passions innocent, as suitable to some kinds of society, and the small number of the societaries, like those of Otaheite and Scandinavia, will not be a reason for rejecting it ; for if you refused the least numerous societies, civilization could not join the ranks ; it would be excluded by the barbarians, three times as numerous as we are. Judge from this, O, philosophers ! into what a snare you fall by advocating prin- ciples such as those of morality, which do not accord with the passional development, and in wishing through prejudice in favor of one society, named civilization, to blame the eleven-twelfths of the passions, the sublimest work of God. If you are willing to co-operate with nature in the govern- ment of the passions, seek for principles applicable to all times, to all places, and to all the passions, or fear lest to-morrow a new society should supervene which shall choose a pivotal passion different from parentism, and which shall reduce both your domestic pleasures and your civiHzee society to the rank of vice. If the Cossacks happened to conquer civilized Europe, they would establish theft and sodomy, their favorite virtues, as the pivot of the social system ; they would be good according to your principles, the moment they be- came the guarantees of any kind of society. After so many signs of your dogmatical blunders, acknowledge that every doctrine is a vicious circle, when it is not connected with the passional development or attraction, which is alone capable of securing for ever happiness to all, because men will always have the twelve radical passions, and will only find their hap- piness in developing them according to the order that God caiTy on business in a grand style. This petty king has accordingly the double merit of committing on a small scale the crime that certain civilizees commit on a decidedly large scale, and of making the avowal of his policy with a certain frankness entirely unknown to our civilizee administrations, who are so well war- ranted in claiming the title of the said petty king. — Note of Fourier. IN THE MONOGYNE CHARACTERS. 347 assigns to the different characters. The 576 monogynes forming the great majority want twelve kinds of development, adapted to their twelve exclusive dominants. The polygynes require a greater variety of evolutions, and the mixts require additional others. All are about to find the means of satis- faction under the regime of attraction. Let us insist on this truth by some details relating to the monogynes, who are the object of this intermediate chapter. I begin with the personages previously mentioned, Apicius and Silenus. It is necessary, according to the rules of the monogyne evolution, that they should wallow in the passion, plunge headlong into it, and yet without excess. How do they attain this end in harmony ? It is because the eleven other passions there serve the purpose of escort to the domi- nant, and relieve each other in the office of co-operating with it, and tempering its fire. Apicius only wants to occupy himself with the kitchens and Silenus with the cellars of the vortex ; nevertheless, both imperceptibly yield to a host of other passions, which come and attach themselves to the service of the dominant, — tastism, the love of good cheer, — and they first give admission to ambition, to the delights of self-love and of interest. Both having acquired at an early age a full understanding of their favorite art, become chiefs of the practical, and perhaps also of the theoretical depart- ment. It is on them that devolves the principal honor of the festivals of the vortex ; a caravan, a banqueting party, wish to see and to entertain these two directors, on Avhora all the machinery of good cheer revolves. Apicius and Silenus are revered in their functions like tutelary angels ; a magni- ficent career is opened to their talents. The kitchen of a vortex is an immense workshop to which all the eatables of the globe are brought in the greatest freshness. The cellar is an immense warehouse, that in like manner discloses all the nectars of all countries ; assistance and advances are lavished in order to facilitate the administration, which de- lights a troop of sectaries impassioned in its favor. Friendship and sectarian cabals transform their sessions 348 CONTRADICTION OF MORALITY into so raany fetes, where Silenus and Apicius enjoy a high consideration, because it is known that their solicitude for the art never cools for an instant, and that, under all circum- stances, they have in view the triumph of the cellar and of the kitchen. All the sectaries, who are less expert and more divided by other cares, cling to Silenus and Apicius, as to two palla- diums on whom the refining of their pleasures and of their cabalistic leagues reposes. Thus these two monogynes, by yielding without measure to their favorite dominant, create the happiness of the vortex and labor for its fortune by in- creasing their own. None of these chances lie open to a civilizee dominated by tastism ; this passion will only lead him to his ruin by the excesses that the want of diversion and of equilibrium always draw along with them. Then the philosophers will say that the passion of dominant tastism is a vice. There is nothing vicious but their clumsy civilization, which does not know how to make any use of the passions, nor of the characters. The proof of this is seen by the im- mensity of the services that the monogynes render to their vortex. Need w^e extend the comparison to other monogynes taken from the proscribed genera, such as sensual pleasure ? Let us select the melomaniae, the monogyne of hearing. At present he is a maniac who ought to be interdicted, a man who will dissipate the fortune of his family for music and musicians. He becomes in the vortex an agent of eminent utility. Each vortex having an opera, and copies of all the masterpieces of the globe, which are numerous because the pieces are only written in one language, our melomaniae is at the head of the musical warehouse, of the instrumental workshops, ateliers de lutherie, of the studies and rehearsals of hymns and concerts, &c. He is the hinge of the opera, which is as necessary as agriculture to the vortex. A melo- maniae devoted to these functions, far from compromising his fortune, is amply remunerated for all these cares, and ex- tolled to the skies by all the sectaries and the strangers. I have sufficiently depicted the contrast in the lot of a IN THE MONOGYNE CHARACTERS. 349 monogyne in the two societies. In harmony he enjoys the general eagerness that every one shews to favor his dominant ; it is profitable to all by the effect of association, and every one applauds the fire of an associate who bears with delight the burden of the principal cares. In civilization the mono- gyne suffers the banterings of a multitude leagued against his passion, from which it gathers no fruit. Of what use can a melomaniac amongst us be to the multitude, which is not associated in his administration, nor admitted to his concerts ; and which, for want of polish and instruction, could not enjoy any pleasure in such an assembly ? What fruit does the people gather from the feasts of the gastronomer and of the connoisseur in liquors (gourmet) ? Their banquets are an insult to the people's privations ; whereas, in harmony, all these raonogynes labor for the poor man who shares in the larder of the vortex, in the festivals of the first class, by the corporate repasts ; and in the concerts and other entertain- ments which are gratuitous and accessible to a polished people. Henceforth every member reckons himself happy to have in each of the series that he likes, a small number of these enthusiasts, of these monogynes who are constantly anxious about the common interests. If there are 144 series in the phalanx, the number of 576 monogynes will give as the mean term four maniacs gradu- ated in each ; it will be too much, considering the diversity of functions that each series presents, being sometimes sub- divided into a score of groups, in which case four monogynes would be too few to bear the chief burden in the various sorts of functions. If very few of these exclusive maniacs are seen in civiliza- tion, it is because nothing is so difficult to develop in the present state of things. How should the gastronomic mania find a vent in the case of a Russian peasant, who lives only on whip-lashes, or of a French peasant, who lives only on nettles ? Besides, it is especially in childhood that most of these penchants ought to commence being formed ; and how should the civilizee child, bewildered by moral constraint and deprived of all means of enjoyment, succeed in creating for 350 CONTRADICTION OF MORALITY himself violent manias of pleasure, whereof the least mani- festation would cause him to be riddled with remonstrances and punishments ? Civilization disfigures everything ; dis- guises the characters of childhood ; only gives them at times a development, to the injury of all, since they are reduced to modulate in countermarch and subversion; the more it causes them to develop in this direction, the greater the destruction. Hence springs moralism, which is nothing but a perpetual criticism of civilization, since at every line it proves to the civiHzee systems that it is incompatible with nature. Another obstacle to the development of the monogynes in civilization, is the fact, that there exist corporative dominants which compel an individual to a form of morals adapted to his cast. A little bourgeois is obliged to affect aversion for pleasure, because a man loses credit with the bourgeoisie when he exhibits an inclination for a splendid and a merry life. He experiences a thousand other obstacles in the play of his passions, whereof I shall treat generally in the chapter on the corporative dominants. There is another kind of hindrance for the polygynes and the mixts ; they receive in detail the equivalent of the blow that the monogyne receives on one point only. Being ad- dicted to a great number of dominants, they suffer less on each particular one. Fatigued by the shock sustained by one of them, they resist by the faculty of diversion and alterna- tion founded on the plurality of dominants. We see conse- quently that great souls, which are always polygynes, shew firmness under circumstances that would crush a vulgar soul or a monogyne, if it struck upon his dominant ; and all things being weighed, misfortune presses chiefly upon the latter, who form the great majority. This vexation is a necessary effect of the civilizee order, which, being the antipodes of destiny, must be disposed in such a manner as to persecute the most numerous characters, and found the general unhap- piness upon the oppression of the monogynes, or exclusive maniacs, the development of which would cause the happi- ness of two-thirds of the human race. It does not follow from this, that the other third, that of IN THE MONOGYNE CHARACTERS. 351 the polygynes and polymixts, is happy in civilization; but their miseries being diversified, they can more easily delude themselves with hopes of luck. Such is the benefit promised us by philosophy, Avhich, being incapable of giving us riches and enjoyments, wishes to teach us how to support the pri- vation of them, and lull ourselves in illusions for want of realities. Alas ! she promises illusions, and has not given them, even in 3,000 years of experiments. The theory of attraction promises realities, and it will give them to us at the first attempt. Would it not be madness to hesitate between the two banners ? SECTION II. OF THE POLYGYNES, OR CHARACTERS OF COMPOUND GAMUT. CHAPTER I. NOTIONS RESPECTING THE AMBIGUOUS OR POLYMIXT CHARACTERS. *' II veut, il ne veut pas, il accorde, il refuse, II econte la haine, il consulte 1' amour ; II promet, il retracte, il condanme, il excuse ; Le meme objet lui plait et deplait tour a tour." — Boileau. Behold, say the civilizees, a very imperfect and a very vicious being : an absurd character ! He is not so, in truth ; for God, who created him, and who daily creates similar ones, would not have taken measures to perpetuate their species had he judged them defective, as you think. Have you ever reckoned the number of those characters you call vicious ? You must have seen that, in the 810, there are at least 700 rejected by the systems of your moralists; that is to say, the human race is only suited to them in the exception; one- eighth only has the gift of pleasing them. They wish to regenerate all the rest in the waters of fraternity and perfec- tibility ; and yet the result of all these visions, is, that the characters remain such as they have been, and preserve inva- riably their 810 original types, in spite of the army of 400,000 volumes which wage war with them. The polymixts or ambiguous characters are very numerous, 104 in 810 ; that is, one-eighth ; and they are not, as might AMBIGUOUS OR POLYMIXT CHARACTERS. 353 be supposed, of inferior order ; the least amongst tliera, the 80 biraixt, hold the same rank as the subaltern officers in a battalion, and are the superiors over the 576 monogjTies. The man whom Boileau has described in the couplet above cited, is a descending and ignoble variety in civilization, but precious in harmony, where it has its functions as a link. Here we have precisely the portrait of the man, who is the sectary of two rival groups, applauds the pretensions of both, supports them both in turn, serves as a point of contact and of union between them, and favors two kinds of work without hindering either. This man is of great value in a vortex, though contemptible amongst us; if he possessed what wc call character — firmness — he could no longer perform the functions of a descending ambiguous link, and the rivtl groups that he frequents would be deprived of a connectivo which cannot be dispensed with in harmony. Their weakness causes them to be enrolled in incompatible groups; it esta- blishes approximations between these groups without weaken- ing either cabalism or emulation ; an ambiguous votary, frequenting the sittings of both groups, informs each of what is calculated to stimulate their respective pretensions, and contribute to the refinement of their industry ; thus these ambiguous characters, very dangerous in civilization, where they are sometimes the dupes of intrigue, and sometimes the instigators of cabals, are very precious agents in harmony, and I can compare them to nothing more appropriate than to the subaltern officers, which are considered as the main-stays of a regiment. The greater number of the vicious characters are of the five ambiguous degrees, and they become vicious by circum- stances, by instigation. Claudius was not less cruel than Tiberius; to prove this, consider his ironical farewell to 20,000 slaves, whom he sends to perish in a sham sea fight for his amusement ; but Claudius is an ambiguous character, who is carried away into these faults, and who would be carried away in like manner to what is good, if those sur- rounding him had been changed ; whilst Tiberius indulged VOL. II. A A 354 AMBIGUOUS OR POLYMIXT CHARACTERS. spontaneously in cruelty, without being instigated to it. He delighted in subversive passions. The neuters, in all the degrees, may be distinguished into species, analogous to the passions whose link they form, and which rule as their intermittent dominants. It is a very complicated theory, and one in which I will not engage the reader. An intermittent dominant differs from a regular domi- nant, inasmuch as the latter influences a character constantly, or is only occasionally eclipsed so as to appear again soon with the same force ; whilst a ralliant has but an equivocal and flickering dominion. Moreover, an ambiguous character is never limited to a single ralliant, Avhich, in that case, would be a monogyne dominant ; he must not have a fixed march in his character : thence it follows that the least degree of ambiguous characters, the bimixt, has at least two ralliants to constitute the ambiguity of character. The ambiguous characters in civilization are of valuable use in deliberating assemblies. They have always a party of followers composed of those amphibious characters which were denominated ventrus, or middle men, by the famous Conven- tion of France. If it were not for this wavering class, every political assembly of civilizees would in a few days finish by going to loggerheads. The ambiguous of the high degrees— trimixts, tetramixts, pentamixts — perform an important part in the civilizee me- chanism. It is they who usually attain the most easily to the superior functions. They are described by the name of turn-coats, chameleons ; but it is not by truth that advance- ment is made in civilization. Thus these chameleons quickly attain their object. Pope Sixtus the Fifth, the Cardinal Mazarin, and many famous ministers, were of these ambi- guous characters of high degree. Intiigue and flexibility being the essential attribute of the greater number of the mixts, this is the class of characters that produces the great- est proportion of parvenus in all civilized countries. The mixts have neither the seven ralliants or flickering AMBIGUOUS OR POLYMIXT CHARACTERS. 355 dominants nor a single one. I have proved above that an exclusive dominant would cast them into a fixed character ; they would attain to it in like manner by the cumulation of the seven ralliants ; it would transform them into mitigated or tempered omnigynes ; their series ought then to avoid the simple ralliant and the general or septuple ralliant ; it ought to be limited to the intermediary degrees of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ralliantSj and such is the attribute of the five degrees of poly- mixts. These chameleons with seven ralliants are, however, to be found ; I shall speak of them in the chapter on bi- potential gamuts. The two transcendent degrees of the polymixt gamut, the 4 and 5, are not necessary to the interior mechanism of a vortex, for they are employed, as well as the transcendent polygynes of the sixth and seventh degree, to the inspection of many associations. They are not the less eminently usefid in that which they inhabit ; but you can do without these transcendent characters in an experimental phalanx which, standing alone and deprived of external rela- tion to harmony, will not require to have its passional orchestra raised above the pentagyne degree. This will not prevent it from making use of the transcendent degrees, if it can meet with them. A A 2 CHAPTER II. ON THE COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OR CONTRASTED SCALE OF POLYGYNES. Alcibiades, in Athens, was tlie most refined of bons vivans ; in Sparta, he was a model of sobriety. This internal con- trast is a property of the 130 polygyne characters. It might be supposed that they contain two souls in one body, they possess so great an aptitude for contrasted or systematically opposite developments. With them the dev^elopment of a passion is composite ; that is to say, it gives the counterpart of itself in regular degrees. If a polygyne is avaricious in the third or fourth degree, he wiU in some cases be extra- vagant in the third or fourth degree ; and if he is able to be placed in circumstances adapted to develop fully all his pas- sions, it will be seen that '^ey are in a double contrasted scale ; it will be seen, in a minute analysis, that there is in him an exact balance of their double gamut in corresponding degrees. If no event had snatched Alcibiades from the effe- minacy of Athens, people would have thought him only susceptible of epicurean tastes, and they would have seen in him only a man refined in divers kinds of pleasm'es, just as Apicius was in a single one. His retreat to Sparta and other incidents will prove that he knew, according to circum- stances, how " To pass from grave to gay, from comic to severe." Civilization does not offer these chances of double deve- COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. 357 lopment ; it almost always places tke polygynes in situations that intercept one of the two characters they possess. Thence it results that the polygynes are not understood, and are overlooked, especially when their passional contrast is but little marked, as is the case with the inferior degrees, digyne trygyne ; when the contrast rises in degrees, which is the case with the tetragynes and pentagynes, they are accused of eccentricity of originality. We may add that civilization suppresses from infancy one of the gamuts of the polygyne, and compels him to make a choice between the two ; ci\dlized education, which is stiffly systematic, being unable to admit two contradictory impul- sions to be good, when it only affords useful employment for one of them. Thus every civilizee polygyne is compelled from infancy to undergo spiritual mutilation, to reduce his soul from the composite to the simple, at least in appearance. He is compelled to regard one of the two gamuts which he possesses as vicious ; to throw himself headlong into the other, and carry it to excess, in order to smother and forget the inward promptings of that which has been silenced, and which he has been taught from infancy to deem ignoble, and to vanquish. The more a polygyne has been compressed into one of his two passional gamuts, the more subject is he to a violent eruption when an opportunity presents itself. How fre- quently have men of the world been seen to pass suddenly from the lap of pleasure to monastic austerities, courtiers and sybarites to retire to the monasteries of the Chartreux or the Trappists, and there shew the example of an entire self-denial and renunciation? Every body reasons or rather declaims diversely on these conversions : the priests maintain that it is a ray of divine grace that has fallen upon the convert ; the men of the world maintain that it is a mania or eccentricity, the cause of which is assigned by each one to be the reverses or contrarieties that the convert may have had to undergo. Let us point out the true spring of these gigantic metamor- phoses. Let us observe, first of all, that they do not take 358 COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. place with the monogynes. If you place Alpicius at Sparta in the same circumstances as Alcibiades, you will not see him fashioned to sobriety ; he will wither up with ennui, and remain there only as long as he is forced. Take the wine- bibber, Silenus, to visit the monastery of La Trappe, to sit at those frugal repasts where pure crystal water is drunk ; that edifying sight will make no impression on him ; no sermon will give him the taste to go to heaven by the water course. We must have polygynes for the metamorphoses^ because they have two contrasted characters, and are able without contradiction to pass from one extreme to the other ; and all those characters whom we have seen, like Charles V., resign the sceptre or the cuiras for the cowl, were generally poly- gynes, persons who have the property of composite develop- ment, or of passions developed in contrasted correspondences, and whose sudden activity in one of the two characters is so much the more violent in proportion to the suppression it has undergone. Let us recapitulate. The polygynes are in the passional vortex what the staff of officers is in a regiment. They form the classes superior to the simple order, inasmuch as they cumulate two opposite developments, and unfold them in contrasts in the same individual, like the treble and bass of a pianoforte. Each one of them is in equilibrium with him- self; that is to say the digyne, carrying out constancy to the second degree, will fall into infidelity of the second degree ; the trigyne will, in like manner, alternate between the con- trasts of the third degree, and so the tetragynes and penta- gynes. This is true as a general rule which admits, however, of methodical exceptions and deviations. We are very much astonished in civilization at the con- tradictory manias we frequently observe in the same indi- vidual. Such a one appears to us eccentric because he saves his farthings and squanders pounds. Such beings seem to us discordant with themselves. No such thing : they are characters of a composite order ; they are the most brilliant in harmony, but have no office in civilization. They arc COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. 359 intended to conciliate in co-operative association two anti- pathetic monogynes, such as Harpagon and Mondor^ charac- ters of extreme avarice and extreme prodigality. In the relations of harmony it is necessary to put these two men in relation with a third, who possesses the two passions in the same degree, to form an alliance of reason between the poly- gyne Lucullus on the one hand, and the two monogynes on the other. Civilization offers no chances for such an asso- ciation. Harmony is able to effect it, and thence arises the accord of intervention. Quce sunt eadem cum uno tertio sunt eadem inter se — two things equally like a third are like each other. If, therefore, we find the means of conciliating in a passional league Harpagon with Lucullus, and INIondor with Lucullus, w^e shall have conciliated indirectly Harpagon and Mondor, although these two persons, as to immediate rela- tionship, would be incompatible in the higliest degree. I have said that there exists between tlie two characters, monogyne and polygyne, the same difference as between instruments of a simple order and those of various scales. A violin, a flute, a horn, a bassoon, can only execute a simple part, either in treble or in bass, whilst the organ, the piano- forte, the harp, execute both parts at once, and are instru- ments of a composite order, acting simidtaneously as bass and treble. It remained for us to shew that certain charac- ters have the same properties, not by an accidental duplicity, as the 104 mixts, who have a double office in vague order, 0"wing to feebleness of dominants. The polygynes perform the double service frankly and steadily, but it would be very difficult to discern this property in them. I have explained the reason; it is because the civilizec order is constantly suffocating the development of one of their passional gamuts. We are only able, therefore, to cite the indications and not the developments. For example, to judge from appearances, I should wager that Lucullus, whose name is symbolical of prodigality, was in another sense as avaricious as the usurer, Cato. After the perusal of these chapters, it will be easy to believe that Lucullus possessed the two passions in a corre- sponding degree, and that, compelled by the civilizec me- 360 COMPOSITE DEVELOrMENT OF POLYGYNES. chanism to adopt one of them and reject the other, he chose magnificence.'^ As the civiUzees of the polygyne class have no means of developing abreast the two opposite propensities, of being at the same time avaricious and extravagant, we often see them modulate in alternation, and after having acted a long time in one character, pass suddenly to the opposite extreme, and become new men. I have stated above, that this effect is no more than an eruption of one or other of the two gamuts that had been compressed by education and by circumstances. As this property is frequently manifested, and people are every where found who have passed from extreme dissipation to the most regular habits, and vice versa. I insist on this well known effect, to draw from it an indication of the con- trasted nature of the composite character bestowed on the 130 polygynes. "We must admit it conditionally, and when * This example may not appear conclusive j as a man may easily be grasping and penurious in money-making matters on the one hand, while he lavishes large sums upon his favorite amusements on the other, without exciting wonder or aversion in the present state of public feeling and opinion ; but a man who is equally fond of spiritual purity of thought and act, contrasted with the natural beauties and refinements of dramatic art, is really condemned to give up practically one, in order to pursue the other freely and consistently with present notions of propriety. Fanaticism is excessive and oppressive in reli- gious circles, while degrading immorality is so excessive and offensive in theatrical affairs, that spiritual delicacy shrinks from the contagion. Many characters avoid the two extremes by abstaining from active administration and particijiation in either ; but those who would like to take an active part in both, are forced to choose between the two, by cultivating one and smothering the other. Religious men may sometimes visit theatres without reproach, and dramatic artists may take their families to church with approbation ; but if actors wished to write and preach religious sermons, or clergymen to play -at theatres, the public would be shocked, and in the present state of social imperfection the thing would be im- prac'icable, however well endowed a man might be to minister in each capacity. The proportion of these polygyne contrasted characters in every sphere of life is probably much larger than Fourier surmised ; for many men, and still more women, are obliged to crush some of their natural and good propensities which cannot be usefully employed, in order to cultivate others which are less attractive but more useful in the present state of things. This will ever be the case until society is perfect, for the growth and stimulus of these impulsions generate the wants which cause society to grow in science and creative power. — H. D. COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. 361 we shall have analysed the effort aud the influence of civiliza- tion to suppress in each polygyne one of the two gamuts of his character^ we shall the more easily be convinced of their existence the more easily we learn for what uses this twofold nature is reserved in harmony. As for the present the polygynes, limited to one develop- ment, may be compared to a man who could only play on the harp or piano with one hand, and could only perform a simple part of treble without bass, or of bass without treble. This passional castration transforms the civilizee polygynes into social eunuchs, and has prevented any attention being paid to their property of contrasted development and double gamut. The contradictions we see in them cause them to be regarded as originals, persons more or less inconsistent, ac- cording to their degree, and who require the lectures of philosophy to be restored to the equilibrium of reason. Their apparent duplicity is weak in the digyne ; if he is prodigal in the second degree, he will, on other points, be avaricious only in the second degree. The contradiction being but slightly indicated is excused as an unsteadiness of character, a human frailty, and the digynes, who form the two-thirds of the polygynes, find favour in public opinion, which is so much the more ready to consider as ridiculous and vicious the tran- scendent polygynes, in whose case the double gamut is con- trasted in a very high degree. Thus the principal characters of the passional system are the most reviled and ridiculed by our moral sciences, which, in passional studies, constantly following the course of the crab, have necessarily, in conse- quence of their universal antithesis, undervalued and despised in the appreciation of characters the most precious produc- tions of nature. Now that prejudice has taken root, it becomes very difficult to rectify public opinion on this sub- ject, and to familiarize ourselves with analytic novelties, that at first sight are truly revolting, like every thing belonging to the theory of attraction. Our philosophical libraries have acted on nature and on truth, like the ashes and the lava of Vesuvius on Herculaneum and Pompeii, which they covered over with an impenGJ;rable crust. So that in order to bring 362 COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. to liglit the most palpable truths on the nature of man, I am obliged to sweep away the thick crust of prejudices that the philosophical crater vomits over the human mind for the last 3,000 years. The analysis of the polygyne characters is one of these buried truths like Herculaneum, the existence of which people at first refuse to credit. Reduced to the necessity of establishing it first of all on feeble indications, I shall cite two material and two spiritual examples, to point out in civilization this fatal property of suffocating, in characters as in every thing, the composite harmonic movement and reducing it to a simple movement. Let us commence by the material proof; I derive it from our two arms, one of which is almost neutralized by false educa- tion. Each one of us, as well left-handed as right-handed, has only the partial use of one of his arms, which only attains to one half the strength and dexterity of the other. This speculative inferiority will entirely cease in harmony, when the two arms of every child will be exercised and developed very equally although in different functions, for there are some that are impracticable with the same arm, such as those of fencing and the use of the bow. A right-handed or left- handed man will be regarded as maimed, he will be compared to one who amongst us is deaf in one ear, and short-sighted in one eye, and evidently injured in these two organs. It is the same with our arm half paralysed by a vicious education, and if civilization does not paralyse one eye and one ear, it is because it cannot do so ; for it is a radical property belonging to it, to suffocate the harmonic composite and bring it back to the simple. It marches to this end in two ways, by the force of inertia and by active intervention. In the weakening of an arm, it acts by inert force, in not opposing itself to the vicious tendency that children have to prefer one arm ; and since it has kept up this disorder for 3,000 years, it is evident by this act that it has the property of suffocating the composite movement and reducing it to the simple. A proof that may also be added is that of the modern use of boots and shoes, by the help of which they have succeeded in depriving the human race entirely of the use of the toes, which in harmony COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. 3G3 are to act like the fingers, especially in musical functions, saving the differences of use. As a compensation for this service of which they have deprived us, our shoes differing from the form of the foot, favor us with corns and bunions ; which, in addition to our being deprived of the use of our toes, deprive us also of the use of the foot ; and in this mon- strous custom, as in many others, it is evident that our per- fection of perfectibility is but an increasing oppression of nature, a progress towards material and spiritual falsity, as it appears from our recent admiration of lying traffic, or the anarchical liberties of stock -jobbing and other mercantile abuses. Let us pass to the second proof, drawn in spiritual matters, from marriage and its increasing influence, contrary to all the customs favorable to love. Love, the most beautiful of all the harmonic compounds, the free accord of two material and spiri- tual pleasures, was still slightly tolerated in antiquity by the customs of concubinage, admitted amongst the religious patri- archs, such as Abraham and Jacob, and by the customs of reli- gious orgies, and certain mj^steries praised by the rigid Cato, who exalted the morality of young men when he saw them go to houses of pleasure. They were not houses of debauchery in an age of republican virtues, when the ladies piously assisted at the procession of the Phallus, and when philosopher- emperors, like Severus, caused their favorites to be placed in the rank of gods. All these usages, vicious or virtuous just as people choose to call them, established, in what relates to love, several chances of liberty and of compound harmonic movement, since the compound harmonic in love is founded on full liberty, without which every amorous union is pretty much limited to the sensual or simple pleasure, at all events for one of the partners. Modern legislature has reduced love entirely to the simple, by the monopoly of pleasure granted to marriage. Without this forced tie, the law does not recognize any lawful intercourse between the sexes. Hence it is that when you come to scrutinize the speculations that preside over marriage, and which are in nine-tenths of unions quite foreign to love, it becomes notorious that civili- 364 COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. zation is walking backwards on this score^ and that it departs more and more from the development of compound love in order to limit itself to the simple. Let people allege plausible motives or not on this subject, such as the austerity of Christianity, the hinderances intro- duced by the venereal disease. I stop not to weigh the value of these replies, but only to analyze facts, the march of the civilizee movement. The more reasons people will allege to justify it, the more will they prove that it is in the essence of civilization to stifle continually more and more every har- monic compound, in order to substitute in its place the simple development. Our ideologists ought to prove to us first that man was made for the simple and not for the compound movement, a thesis that would be the worthy complement to the impertinences of an age wherein it is set up as a problem, whether man is a simple being, a body without a soul. APPENDIX FOR CAVILLERS. Let us clear up two apparent errors that might be sus- pected in this chapter. The first would be a contradiction of dominants, and the second, would be to admit a composite development in simple pivot. 1. The contradiction of dominants. When I reproach civilization with suffocating the composite movement to establish the simple, it may seem as if T contradict the tables where I have pointed out the tenth passion, the composite, as dominant of the period of civilization. How is it, you will say, that a mechanism whose essence it is to move all in composite accord, opposes itself to all composite harmonic de- velopment ? It is because civilization, which is a subversive society, a period of dark limbo, must accomplish its develop- ments by a composite subversive development, because it is governed by the composite. This is why it every where suffo- cates the composite harmonic development in order to substi- tute for it the subversive composite, or reduce, at all events, good to a simple development, if it cannot make evil prevail. Let us apply the rule to a well known character, that of Nero, a very ardent tetragyne with a dominant very little COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. 365 compatible with the civilized order. His dominativc was formed of ambition, love, the composite, and the cabalist. They are the four passions whose combined development would be the most difficult. Nero, notwithstanding the aids of education, was not able to reach the composite deve- lopment of his four passions. He vegetated for some time in simple or bastard development, apparently inclining to gentleness ; but as soon as his rage carried him away, he entered on the subversive composite development, and un- folded his passions powerfully in crime, casting diamonds to the people, and cutting the throats of the great. Traces of the composite are always to be found in his crimes. If he causes the city of Rome to be set on fire, he adds dramatic illusions to the spectacle, declaiming from the summit of a tower verses on the burning of Troy. If he has senators beheaded, it is in order to force them to acknowledge him as the first of singers. If he has his mother killed, he carries out certain views called philosophical in this crime, and wishes to behold in the half opened body, the place from whence he took his birth. Nero always practises crime in composite development, and will be for this reason distinguished by posterity ; it will see in him a tetragyne w ho would have been infinitely precious in harmony, where he would have been able to demean himself in harmonic composite develop- ment : instead of accusing Nero, it will accuse civilization, which, from the most beautiful passional notes, can only obtain the most odious effects, and change incessantly gold into copper, by giving us an impulse for composite develop- ment that we can only satisfy by a subversive march. 2. The composite development with a simple pivot. We find in the monogynes some gleam of this development. If Harpagon makes the very rare efi'ort of giving a dinner, he will give it to profusion, and thence is derived the adage : — " No cheer equals that of a mean fellow."* The miser on that day will depart from his habitual character, and form a contrast with himself in regular degree. Must we conclude from this that Harpagon is a polygyne, provided * II n'est telle chere que de vilain. 366 COMPOSITE DEVELOPMENT OF POLYGYNES. with the double passional gamut ? No ; for in this case it is a contrast of exception, and not of permanency, as with the polygyne, who is continuous in his contrasts, whilst the monogyne skims over them without fixing himself therein. He affords them nevertheless, and sometimes undergoes a change of one day. Silenus will indeed take an oath that he will drink no more ; but will he keep it until the morrow ? That is doubtful. These gleams of change are not then the sign of polygyny, but the eflFect of a diffracted movement. Every development of a movement carried to excess, is gifted with this property of giving its diffraction or a gleam of con- trast. Thus the oak, which in its large species gives the color black, or absorption of the rays, par la noix de galle, by the de galle nut gives in diffraction the most brilliant of the rays which is scarlet, produced by the kermes, which is a dwarf oak, or the semblance of an oak. The period of civilization is in the full enjoyment of this property, it gives in a regular system thirty-two diffractions and the pivotal. They are thirty-two gleams of the customs of harmony, of which their ensemble furniGhes a complete abridgement in reversed order. I shall treat of this in the inverse pivotal section. Meanwhile let us beware of taking these diffractions or gleams of contrast for composite deve- lopments, because they exist with the monogynes, who are nevertheless characters of simple essence, revolving on a simple dominant or pivot. These two remarks are somewhat abstruse, and I should not have made them had it not been necessary to convince the cavillers that, it will be easy for them to make mistakes aboiit the apparent defects of my theory, and that they ought to look a second time before raising objections. CHAPTER III. OF THE TRANSCENDENT POLYGYNES AND OF THEIR USE. I AM quite aware that the detail of the 810 characters, their degrees and their properties, are a very insipid and abstruse study to a reader not initiated into these novelties, and that expedients are requisite in order to interest him in this theory, the importance of which will be felt in the section on sympathies. I only desire in this place to familiarize him with the primordial gamut, or the distinction in the eighth degree, pointed out in the fourth chapter of the first division. The definition I have given of it is much too succinct ; some other additional developments ought to be furnished ; but one consideration embarrasses me ; I can only define in the characters, properties inapplicable to the civilizee mechanism. The greater number of those qualities that are despised in civilization are precious materials in harmony, and the greater number of our virtues, especially the monastic, will there find no employment. Thus, in order to dispose the reader to suspect his prejudices in this respect, I endeavour to palliate some vices, and to make it appear how much the passions that are the most vicious in the actual state of things, will be in accordance with the customs of harmony. I shall dwell, in the first place, on the subject that I have chosen as a general theme of comparison. A miser, in har- mony, can neither plunder nor weary any one. Harpagon cannot refuse to give his children necessaries. They are like all the rest, attracted to labor, perform uses, and earn money. 368 THE TRANSCENDENT POLYGYNES. of which they have the enjoyment from early childhood; and in advance of which, the phalanx furnishes them with food, clothing, lodging, and recreations of all sorts. They have at all events the minimum, or entertainment of the third class : they receive almost annually inheritances and legacies of divers relatives or legatees. Harpagon is then limited to heap up for them, without being able to deprive them of any enjoyments. He cannot starve his domestics, nor his horses ; for the domestics are not personal in harmouj^, and animals have at least the usual ration of the stables : the injustice of a man who would not consent to feed his horses sufficiently, would nowhere be tolerated. On the single proposal to de- prive them of what is necessary and reduce the habitual minimum, he would be brought to justice at the divan of the small hordes as a persecutor of animals. The miser in harmony cannot lend himself to usury, for every one finds at the regency of his vortex, and at the ordi- nary rate of interest, the sums that he can guarantee by means of a property in shares, or by other good securities. In a word, avarice will only be able to exert itself in useful details. Harpagon will be the chief of the sect of the gleaners who gather the remains of the repasts and of the harvests. The remains are very considerable in a society which nou- rishes copiously a thousand persons, and sometimes several thousands, at the time of the passage of armies. The gleaners compose very varied and respectable dishes from these re- mains, which they gather together from the tables of all the classes, and the vortex awards them an ample dividend as a reward for this useful function. Their sordid tendencies can in every sense be productive of good only, for they are not able to influence the vortex so far as to drag it into a parsi- mony that would be ridiculous, and contrary to the general mechanism of the passional series. We have seen that the spendthrift, on his part, only meets with chances of general interest ; that the greater part of his fantasies turn to the public good. If Lucullus has a mania for superb edifices, it impels him to have beautiful pavilions constructed for his favorite groups, which unite usefulness of THE TRANSCENDENT TOLYGYNES. 369 purpose with industrial encouragement : if he chooses to have a sumptuous table, it is not ruinous for him, because the regency is charged with providing the provisions, and the regime of veridical commerce (of which we shall treat in the fourth part) protects the harmonians from all fraud and ex- tortion. The banquets of Lucullus will co-operate for the encouragement of industry, for they will be the most fre- quently given to the industrial groups, of which he is the sectary. Thus profusion will in every sense only find employ- ments useful to the mass. In examining other passions, opposite in themselves, it will be seen that their development, whether in simple or in composite, always finds in harmony, counterpoises that pre- vent all excess. Gluttony will never there produce a Vitellius, because after an hour's feasting, during which the activity of conversation will have prevented intemperance, Vitellius will find an option of many very enchanting pastimes, that will draw him away from the table. He will not think of recom- mencing his repast, a mediocre pleasure, when the appetite is satisfied ; a pleasure that Vitellius would not have sought at the risk of vomiting, had he been well provided with other enjoyments presented for his choice. From the moment the passions will be guaranteed from excess, no one will repress either tlie manias of others or his own. They are usually sufi'ocated by the fear of ridicule. A polygyne ends by thinking himself bizarre, because he is laughed at about his contrasted manias for saving half-pence, and wasting ducats. He will be extolled in harmony for this pretended absur- dity, which will have enrolled him in the useful act of the gleaners, without diminishing his liberality in the employ- ment wherein it is profitable to the mass. Such a man, uniting opposite qualities with equal power, will be as valuable as a two-faced mirror giving opposite reflections. It is necessary to become imbued with this harmonian property of utilizing all the passions, in order to speculate without prejudice upon some which are reputed very vicious amongst us ; for instance, that of multiple loves, or amorous VOL. II. B B 370 THE TRANSCENDENT POLYGYNES. cumulation. Certain men are seen to love several women m once, and certain women are seen to love several men at once. A grand subject of criticism for the multitude. I speak not here of accidental intercourse : it happens daily, that a man has several women at once, and that a woman has several men at once : it is a custom sufficiently general in the fashionable world. I speak only of sustained inclinations, of the characters that lead two, three, four loves abreast, during a sufficient length of time. This custom, vicious in appearance, is a property common to the great majority of polygynes, and graduated according to their degrees ; that is to say, that the digyne likes to lead two loves abreast, the trigyne three loves, the tetragyne four loves, &c. This taste only dominates them by alternation, and they are not the less subject to fall at times into an exclusive love; but they revert alternately to the multiple liasions, and if they have friendship among their dominants, they preserve friendship for the numerous persons whom they have loved with deep affection. Their inconstancy, their amorous polygamy becomes in this respect, a laudable quality, inasmuch as it secures their constant friendship to a great number of temporary male or female favorites. In civilization this property is much more vicious than useful. It destroys the peace of households, causes the depravation of manners, and other inconveniences attaching to the cumulation of loves ; but in harmony, this pretended eccentricity having very useful employments, which I shall describe in the section on compound sympathies, you must till then suspend all criticism on the characters, and attend at first to analyze them whether good or bad. These inclinations obstructed, and as it were buried, abound with the transcendent polygynes, pentagynes, hexa- gynes, heptagynes ; they are the superior officers of the staff in harmony. It has been shewn by the models quoted, .7. J. Rousseau, Charles Fox, Frederick the Great, Buonaparte, Julius Csesar, Alcibiades, that these characters are the degrees best deserving attention, though considered as ori- ginals in civilization, where they have no fortune ; and truly THE TRANSCENDENT POLYGYNES. 371 they do seem very original in comparison with the multiude of monogynes. But criticism, in debasing them, is as absurd as if it required of a general and a colonel to perform the same functions as the common soldiers. The passional world has, like the army, and the administration, its officers of every degree. God must have given them properties different from those of t^e multitude, and after having lost 3,000 years in criticizing them as useless or injurious in civilization, it is time at last to study what services they will be able to render in an order of things different from civilization. A distinguishing quality of the polygynes being to deve- lop abreast several dominants, it follows from this that they can introduce themselves into a great number of series and groups. The pentagyne couple, which is essential in every vortex, ought to be associated with the great majority of the 144 series ; at least sixty for a man, and sixty for a woman : I speak approximately. The four couples of tetragynes are in like manner associated with a great number where they work in contrasted degrees ; their employment can only be explained in the ninth section, in the notice on composite sympathies. In order to depict them in a mass and comparatively, I see no better means than to describe the highest and most eccen- tric degree ; I shall, therefore, give a chapter on the eccen- tricities and contradictions of the omnigynes, much greater still than those of the other polygynes. In defining the eighth degree I shall dispense with all details on the inferior degrees; the lesser will easily be understood from the greater. B B :^ CHAPTER IV. OF THE OMNIGYNES AS PIVOTS OF INFINITESIMAL MOVEMENT. The most elevated in degrees, the omnigyne in characters, although superior to all the others, is not the most beautiful, but only the most precious. Nature loves to divide her favors; she gives grace to some, utility to others. The omnigyne, which is the most useful note, is like the white ray compared with the seven rays. The color white is not so beautiful as the scarlet or the azure ; but it has properties more useful and employments more extended. The omnigynes are, in certain details, eccentric in their own eyes, as well as in those of others. The amiable qualities are entirely on the side of the heptagynes, such as Csesar, Alcibiades. The omnigynes are limited to the useful, which they possess in the supreme degree. It is not a character to be vain about, and I repeat it, I make my debut by criticism, because I shall be obliged to cite myself as an example, know- ing no other omnigyne than myself. I have easily found models in all the other titles ; but I discover no omnigyne amongst the men who have played a part in history. We find very fine heptagynes, for instance Csesar and Alcibiades. We find hexagynes more celebrated than fine, as Frederick and Buonaparte ; but I cannot find in my historical reminis- cence one single omnigyne, and I shall be obliged to the person who will point me out one. For that to be possible, I must define their properties. This definition necessitates a preamble on the infinitesimal composite gamut, which is their essential attribute. OF THE OMNIGYNES AS PIVOTS. 373 It has been rightly said^ that there is uo small economy in a large empire ; Avith greater force, therefore, it may be said in the domestic administration of the globe, where economy is introduced only by the intervention of the omni- gynes. If a match is lost every day in a vortex, it amounts at the end of the year to 365 matches ; the same loss in 3,000,000 vortices, would amount to 1,100,000,000 bits, or 22,000,000 packets of 50 bits. Now, much time and expense are requisite to make the 22,000,000 packets. If they are saved, the time devoted to making them can be employed in works of amusement, without having diminished in the least the general well being. Our economists will say that it T^dll be a loss for the friends of commerce, the sellers and makers of matches. In harmony they do not reason thus ; all con- sumption that can be spared without interfering with enjoy- ments is regarded as a real loss. The people being very rich, do not require more or less matches to be made, but require that time and capital should not be uselessly lost, that can be employed in augmenting the public enjoyments. Eeckon the price of these 22,000,000 packets ; the shopkeeper sells them 6 for a penny ; they are therefore worth 700,000 francs, or £28,000, in commei'cial value, which comes out of the pocket of the consumers, and goes into that of the unproduc- tive class, as well the sellers as the makers ; for in harmony, where no sophisms contradictory with experience are admitted, all that can be saved by a better extended administration is called unproductive. If the daily waste of a match by the vortex of 1000 per- sons, dissipates 700,000 francs per annum on the globe, let us calculate on the mass of matches that a bad administration can dissipate. In an order where each one lives in ease and has matches in abundance, as well as everything else, I do not exaggerate in estimating that if the harmonians were to adopt the profusion of the civilizees, who never replace their match, and who, in order to employ one of them, let fall another, and sometimes two or three others to be trampled on and brushed away, you would lose each day as many matches as there exist of individuals ; that is to say, instead 374 OF THE OMNIGYNES AS PIVOTS of one you would lose a thousand per vortex, and the damage in ulterior value would amount to 1000 times 700,000, or annually 700,000,000 francs, or twenty-eight millions sterling for the entire globe. This is nearly the fiscal revenue of France to be saved on the very minute economy of the matches of the globe. In civilization all saving of this sort is illusory, because the economy is not combined. If a man saves some few matches, just as many will be bought in his house ; and fre- quently whilst he economizes one, the servant throws a whole packet on the fire to set the wood in a blaze. But in harmony the most minute economies become a general and combined efiect. It is to the omnigyne characters that this is to be attributed ; and before defining them, let us commence by appreciating them from the effects of their infinitesimal manias, very ridiculous in civilization like the avarice of matches; after which we will judge them from the counter- manias, such as the profusion of diamonds ; these two ex- cesses or extremes of uses marching abreast in the case of the omnigynes. If we apply this calculus regarding the economy of the matches to all the objects of habitual consumption, we shall recognise that the waste inherent in the civilizee system would amount, not to tens of thousands, but to billions and trillions, if the same domestic system were to be applied to harmony. They seem a very small concern, those cherry stones, which every child makes a sport of throwing about by hundreds and by thousands in the course of the season ; now if we desire to speculate on the strict use of all the cherry stones on the globe, supposing it generally cultivated and a population of three billions, we shall find from this imper- ceptible object enormous economic results, and much greater still from the stones of large fruit. What will it be with the immense detail of the substances of the three kingdoms, put into consumption for the service of three billions of men living in opulence ? In placing this calculus as I have done with the matches, it would be seen that harmony will know how to create incalculable treasures solely by saving extremely OF INFINITESIMAL MOVEMENT. 375 minute things, an economy that rests chiefly upon the inter- vention of the omnigyne characters, and the immensity of which I have not yet explained. Let us observe provisionally that any one who loses with indifference one half of a match will in like manner waste cherry-stones, then peach and apricot stones, and at last everything that exists; for economy is nothing if it is not universal and unitary, like that of God, who, in the administration of universes, does not suflFer an atom to be lost. Chemistry gives us proofs of this, and the industrial man will then only be in God's ways, wl^en he shall have established this infinitesimal economy in the whole public and private administrations of the globe. Let us pass from one extreme to the other. The omni- gynes are the pivots of administration in the two extremes. In provoking the saving of cherry-stones and matches, they excite on the other hand the profusion of architectural splen- dor, colonnades and domes. Is it a foolish expense ? No ; the only thing foolish in harmony is the expense that does not apply to general enjoyment; now the vortex which will ornament its palace with twenty domes and twenty peristyles more superb than those of the Pantheon, will not have com- mitted a folly, since this order is disposed in such a manner that every expense fructifies when it flatters the collective attraction, and this luxury will flatter the self-love of the sectaries, all of them bred to the knowledge of the fine arts ; it will inspire them in the work, and will cause their efforts to prosper ; it will cause their stock to rise in the share- market, and be sought after by all strangers. Let us cut short this preamble, already very long. I return to the link of the two apparent excesses in profusion and parsimony. I shall confine myself to the question of their connection ; for instance, that the most immense luxury in all pleasures of taste, touch, hearing, smell, becomes useful and fruitful for the mass of the passional series of a vortex, from the moment that it raises economy coUectively to the same degree that it carries luxury. On this condition, it acquires in the industrial administration a property which, in the present day, seems to be reserved for God alone, and 376 OF THE OMNIGYNES AS PIVOTS whicli will soon be the attribute of men, — that of not losing a single atom, and of not moving one without employing it for general utility. It is a small thing to raise material economy to the infinite degree. There is another sort of saving not less pre- cious in harmony, that regards everything as a composite system. It is the philanthropic liberal economy, or employ- ment of all the individual expenses for the benefit of the collective passions. What matters it that Lucullus causes a magnificent saloon to be built, if the pleasure of enjoying it is only reserved for him and some privileged men? His pomp, though directed with economy, will not fulfil the aim of harmony, which is to satisfy the mass in proportion to the delights procured for the individual. It is still on the omni- gynes that the sway of this universal benevolence depends ; it is they who give the impulse in all the measures of philan- thropy and of liberalism. Our mock liberal philosophers have never had any idea, as I have proved, of liberal ideas, and as in harmony everything is united, it founds collective liberalism on individual parsimony. If Lucullus is not formed from infancy to practise economy with matches, or to respect those who practise it, he will accustom himself to isolate his interests from those of the masses for whom labor is inces- santly carried on. Individual philanthropy is merely illusory. In order to make it collective, each individual must be led to prefer the luxury of the vortex to his own ; Lucullus must prefer the honor of having constructed a dome that adorns the residence of the vortex, to the petty glory of a saloon that would only benefit himself and some of his friends. And one of the great springs which conduct to this end in har- mony is the point of economic honor to which the young tribes and corporations are accustomed. If men's minds were less obstructed by prejudices and more familiar with liberal ideas, I might extend this sketch to the influence of the omnigyne's love, and prove that it is on them that chiefly reposes the general harmony of this kind of pleasure ; but it is a matter very delicate to treat of in speaking to civilizees, consequently, I am reduced to keep OF INFINITESIMAL MOVEMENT. 377 incessantly to the calculations of interest, whicli are not pro- scribed amongst us. I shall confine myself as much as pos- sible to questions of interest, the most within the reach of all classes of readers. These hinderances create monotony in my demonstrations, and oblige me to overload my compari- sons with avarice and prodigality : not that other and more interesting examples were Avanting to bring on the scene, but we must unavoidably yield to prejudices, and follow the key- note of the civilizee orchestra. FUNCTIONS AND APPARENT ECCENTRICITY OF THE OMNIGYNES. Let us first of all treat of their rarity : it is not excessive, since nature produces a couple of them in about 30,000 per- sons ; but they are of factitious rarity, having against them the impossibility of development that the heptagyues have not. A graceful character like that of Alcibiades, is from infancy encouraged by every body ; his development is more favored than that of any other degree. We may also remark that, although the development be very difficult and very much shackled in the superior degrees ; the heptagyne who easily adapts himself to circumstances must be excepted ; as for the omnigyne, much more rare^ he is amongst the civi- lizees, what the screech owl is amongst birds. Hence it is that those who have lived in the middle classes of society, have not been able to act characteristically ; and if any are found on thrones they will have taken the subversive deve- lopment, which is not injurious in this degree, and which will have reduced them to originals little worthy of attention. Let us proceed to the detail of their properties. When I was ignorant of the theory of harmony and of the passional functions which it requires, I was astonished at the con- trasted inclinations with which I was accused ; although very averse to parsimony, and incapable of minute cares, I had, and I still have, on a host of details manias of avarice much more powerful than those of Harpagon, He thinks himself at the height of economy, when having used a match at one end, he hides it away to make use of it at the other end ; I myself, involuntarily, and without thought, divide by 378 OF THE OMNIGYNES AS PIVOTS a pressure of the fingers the match of hemp into four pieces, of which I make eight matches to serve for eight days."^ I could mention a number of other trifles upon which I exercise economy, without reflecting, and by an irresistible instinct ; I laugh at myself for doing so, without being able to cure myself, from things before which Harpagon would acknowledge himself to be a weaker champion, as inferior in degree to myself, as the fifth degree is to the eighth, which is mine. And yet I am anything but economical, and have never been able to fashion myself in this way to the careful- ness which is indispensable to a man without fortune. On the other hand, I have so great a taste for combined stateliness, that at the age of eighteen years, I was wearied with the ugliness of cities that are admired like Paris, and I invented the distribution of the cities of the sixth period (guaranteeism), the plan of which may be seen in the thirteenth section. What can be more opposed to the luxury of a palace surrounded by paltry huts and dirty streets, or a city begirt in all its avenues by dirty suburbs ? These absur- dities had already struck me at the age of eighteen forcibly enough to make me think over the remedy. I was consequently, in matters of splendor, much more refined than the sybarites and artists of civilization, Avho have never had any other than partial views, without a general plan in matters of luxury, and have never known how to build an elegant town ; in a word, they have never known how to lodge the human race. On this point as on all others, they only think of partial and inconsistent luxury, as in the case of an individual who wears a splendid coat, with dirty worn-out shoes and stockings. In the two sorts of penchants just cited, the contrast is very marked in the eighth degree, which is the infinite- simal. Let us pass to the natural uses of these pretended eccentricities which, though deprived of authority in civiliza- tion, are extremely productive in harmony. In making the circuit of thirty-six or forty vortices to which the passional administration of an omnigyne extends, * Marginal note, — crooked pins, knots of packthread. OF INFINITESIMAL MOVEMENT. 379 it is necessary that I should give in them, at one and the same time, lessons of economy to the Harpagons, and lessons of splendor to the Mondors ; it is necessary, in short, that I act on the two contraries in the eighth degree, whilst Har- pagon and Mondor only carry economy and splendor up to the fifth degree. They have ardor and impetuosity ; an omnigyne has intelligence and coolness, sang-froid : it is by this means that his employment becomes more judicious and more refined. Let us establish in the first place our comparison in con- nection with economy. It has been shewn that everything that is mean and sordid avarice in a civilizee menage becomes a very fruitful function in harmony ; in an opulent house- hold feeding a thousand persons and sometimes several thousands, the gathering of the remains is there a highly important business, less for the sake of benefitting thereby than for that of teaching every one not to be wasteful. Har- pagon, chief of this gathering process, will not carry care- fulness so far as to pick up a cherry in the dust, wipe it and eat it with greater pleasure than one that might be brought to table on a china dish ; you will not see him gleaning amongst the rinds of fruit that remain on the plates, and gaily eating the scanty food that can be got from them, with- out eating the skin ; moreover, in the infinitely minute sav- ings, Harpagon, will not carry about him the readiness and satisfied air of an omnigyne ; he will have an appearance of greediness, ill temper, egoism such as will inspire disdain of his niggardliness. I shall infinitely surpass him by the dis- interested manner, the attractive air I shall infuse into these minute gleanings, and when I shall have visited a vortex, and acted with the groups of gleaners, the children and pupils of this group Avill exclaim that their chief, Harpagon, is but a tyro in comparison with the omnigyne. The group of magnifiques will say the same of the splendor of its chief Mondor, on account of the numerous faults that I shall point out in the collective luxury of the phalanx. The omnigyne enjoys par excellence the property of con- ciliation. It is owing to his intervention that two opposites. 380 OF THE OMNIGYNES AS PIVOTS like Harpagon and Mondor, are enabled to approach one another^ rally each other, on their inferiority, and mutually accuse each other of being abortions only ; the one in eco- nomy, the other in magnificence. He absorbs their antipa- thies by the superiority he has over them. The time is not come for examining these effects of which I shall treat when we come to the composite sympathies. The omnigynes are more subject to pass from one extreme to another, than any other degree. (During my childhood, I was the wildest gambler, and one might have inferred that I should become nothing more or less than a professed gambler; but having grown up to manhood, I took such an aversion for play that I am incapable of bestowing on it the least attention.) Excess reigns in all their alternations ; they will have a romantic love during some weeks, and sud- denly revert to a full inconstancy. An omnigyne would be vicious and unfit for his functions were he not addicted to all these contrary eccentricities. For example, if a love affair were to stop him for a long time, how could he make the circuit of the vortices where his passional administration is necessary? He would, accordingly, be obliged to tear him- self away from his pleasures, in order to apply himself to business ; a sacrifice of this sort would be a contradiction of harmony, for it ought to direct all by attraction ? To this end it is necessary that the omnigynes should be very incon- stant in love, the mean duration of the illusion being con- fined, in their case, to one-eighth of the year, say six weeks dating from possession. On the other hand, they are con- stant in friendship to perpetuity, and the woman whom they shall have loved with the passion of love only during a month or two, will find them as faithful friends at the end often years, as on the first day. To sum up what has been said, the omnigyne having to develop abreast and in combined domi- nance the seven spiritual passions, it is indispensable that he should flit about and papiUonate over all of them, and that he should only be constant in those, such as friendship, which do not hinder the free vent of the others ; but an omnigyne constant in love would be a monstrosity. It would OF INFINITESIMAL MOVEMENT. 381 be necessary to'^deprive him of his rank, and declare him a false title. There are among the monogynes as many con- stant people as are required for the meclianism of each vortex. If the omnigyne couple, which has to govern about forty of these vortices, were addicted to constancy, it would cause a hiatus in forty vortices, because this couple would no longer act in amorous omnigyny were it habitually to extend con- stancy to three or four months. I hear people say, there will then be no lack of this kind of service, for neither men nor women are scarce who are dis- posed to change their love every six weeks, and still oftener. This jest does not tell, because it confounds libertinage with the passion. Those women who change lovers every day will not be able on that account, to act in omnigyny which requires a passion very vehement, and in six weeks passing through all the stages of increase and decrease that might occupy six years in a constant character such as Petrarch or Abelard. I shall not enlarge on the other eccentricities of the omnigynes. It suffices to have shewn by these few details that amongst the eight hundred and ten characters of grand scale, and the transcendent notes which have the high pas- sional administration, each one is good, notwithstanding oddities, provided he is at the degree that his functions and his grade on the grand scale require. Our eternal debates on vice and virtue are void of sense, whilst we are ignorant of the harmonic employments of certain qualities, deemed vices, like avarice and inconstancy. Our moralists who would like to run all the characters into one single mould, make all men brothers, all republicans, all friends of commerce, resemble the man who wished all coats to be cut on the same pattern. Before enacting anything concerning good or evil, we ought to know the uses that God assigns in harmony to those incli- nations we call vicious, and which are for the most part the finest properties of the human race, like the omnigyne whose infinitesimal gamut entirely composed of inclinations and excesses ridiculed at present, becomes in harmony the pas- sional diamond and the focus of all social perfection. 383 OF THE OMNIGYNES AS PIVOTS Those who are monogyncs of family affection are loaded with excessive praise ; they are proclaimed good fathers, good sons, good cousins, good republicans, persons who faint with tenderness in their opulent homes, whilst their neigbors are starving. An omnigyne shines but very little in these exclu- sive paternal affections that moralists and newspapers extol. He will love his children sufficiently, but you will see him love and appreciate those of other people. As he must develop equally the seven primary passions, and moreover, unityism or philanthropy, which is the result thereof, it is necessary that friendship and philanthropy should never lose their rights over him. Those violent domestic affections would completely divert him from the social affections ; he will be able during some weeks to deliciously enjoy the birth of a child, for the omnigynes are all on fire at the moment of passional explosion ; but the ecstasy will be of short dura- tion, and philanthropy will soon resume its empire over him. He will be a father, but little infatuated and very different from those who are deified every day in biographical notes, under the title of good fathers, good sons, good republicans ; true egoists who have no other merit than that of being good towards themselves and their own family. The civilizee morale adores only this tinselled egoism of paternal love so well described by Sedaine in the following verse. Nous aimons la bonte L'exacte probite, Chez les autres ; Faire le bien est si doux, Pour ne rendre heureux que nous Et les notres. Will it be said that I accuse morality falsely, that it has on the contrary incessantly declaimed against family selfish- ness and all other sorts of selfishness; that it extols those who sacrifice their father and their son for the public good; Junius Brutus, who destroys his two children, and Decimus Brutus who stabs his father? These are other excesses that confirm the one I denounce: for extremes meet, and it is not surpris- ing tliat morality, always deluded in lier visions, should be OF INFINITESIMAL MOVEMENT. 383 impassioned for tlie extremes of malice, for the demagogue murderers of their father, and of their son, and for the egoists who seeing the social happiness only in that of the family, think, like kings, that all the people ought to be happy when they have dined well. CHAPTER V. OP THE CHARACTERS OF BI-POTENTIAL GAMUT. This chapter is, like the Appendix, an answer to anticipated objections. The cavillers have so great an influence, that it is necessary to devote a few pages to the purpose of satisfying them : by not replying to them, it would seem as though we feared them. The omnigyne character, the definition of which I have only slightly sketched, and who is the highest note in the octave, is not yet the highest degree or the most elevated rank to which a character can attain. Nature has no limits ; she is infinite in varieties. The characters limited to 810 sorts, and some transcendents, have in addition distinctions of innumerable shades. If it be true that there are not on earth two faces absolutely similar, neither are there two characters exactly similar in the same title ; 1000 omnigynes will afford 1,000 shades, different in complexion though unitary in types. Since we find an omnigyne couple in 30,000 persons, we shall thence find 100,000 couples in 3,000,000,000 inhabit- ants that this globe will contain when fully occupied. What method does nature follow in the varieties to be distributed to these 100,000 couples of omnigynes ? To say that she forms with them new octaves or gamuts of the second power, which follow the distribution indicated in tlie table of the second chapter ; for example : — CHARACTERS OF BI-POTENTIAL GAMUT. 385 8. Omnigyne. — 1 supertonic passion ruling 1 district of 30,000 Bi-omnimi-xt . — 7 raJliants and 2 super-ralliants. 9. Bi-omnigyne. — 2 super-tonics, 4 districts .... 120,000 Tri-omnimixt . — 3 super-ralliants. 10. Tri-omnigyne. — 3 super-tonics, 12 districts . . . 360,000 11. Tetra-omnigyne. — 4 super-tonics, 48 districts . . 1,440,000 These characters have a super-dominant drawn from the seven primaries. Marginal Note : — 12. Penta-omn 4,320,000 13. Hexa-omn 17,280,000 14. Hepta-onin 51,840,000 15. Sur-omn 207,300,000 16. Bi-sur-omn 622,080,000 17. Tri-sur-omn 2,488,320,000 This would be engaging the reader in theoretical depths, into whicli there is no need for him to plunge. Their ex- planation ought, however, to have a place in a regular treatise, and I shall say something about tbem in the com- plementary sections. You may find on this globe a tri-super-omnigyne couple, or a seventeenth in degree, which character is scarcely to be met with, except among from two-and-a-half to three billions of inhabitants. There will always exist in harmony a couple of this kind, which will be the passional sovereign of the globe, a sceptre widely different from those of the eight car- dinal and mixt titles, inasmuch as it will be given by nature without the choice or influence of men. What is remarkable in these bi-potential characters, is that the degrees which close and surpass the second octave, such as the 15th, 16th, and 1 7th, have the singular property of discovering, almost by inspiration, the laws of harmony ; that is to say, that a civihzee of the super-omnigyne, or 15th title, granting that he has instruction, ought to arrive at this discovery ; and I must necessarily be of this degree, since I have arrived at it without any help, without any anterior theory that could put VOL. II. c c 386 CHARACTERS OF BT-POTENTIAL GAMUT. me in the way of it. Now since nature only gives a super- omnigyne couple in 207,360,000, and only four among the existing population of the globe, it has quite possibly hap- pened, during 3,000 and even 6,000 successive years, that these so rare notes have fallen habitually among savage slaves, or peasant couples, who will not have received the education necessary to develop their properties. Hence it comes that 3,000 years have elapsed without men's having discovered passionally, or by inspiration, this calculus of har- mony, which has been missed likewise in theoretical studies, through the clumsiness of our savans and the incorrectness of our methods. Let us glide over these abstruse problems of the super- omnigyne gamuts. The task of the novice reader is to con- fine himself to what concerns the experimental vortex, to initiate himself in the knowledge of the first five degrees of character from the monogyne to the pentagyne, since more is not required in order to organize the nucleus of destiny, or the experimental vortex which, once founded and put in motion, has the property of attracting the whole human race, and of creating universal unity. Even supposing that man should be ignorant of the higher political organizations, they would be guessed by inspiration by the harmonians ; that is to say, that attraction alone, as soon as it were developed by the vortex over the whole globe, would suffice to suggest the measures of general unity to be established in this new society. It is necessary therefore to dwell on the primordial business, or the art of regularly forming the vortex of 810 contrasted and graduated characters ; after which there will remain a scientific obstacle to be overcome ; but I abstain at present from mentioning the remedy. I allude to the twelve hiatuses of attraction, twelve quicksands, in each of which that experimental phalanx would fail, and which, having neither practised co-operating members nor established pas- sional relations, as well in the interior as in the exterior, will be comparable to a wounded man who must be assisted by crutches, and who could not walk by himself; such will CHARACTERS OF BI-POTENTIAL GAMUT. 387 be the first vortex. It would be in vain that people formed it according to the rules pointed out ; it would fall to the ground at the first step, like a wounded man deprived of support, if the remedy for the twelve gaps of attraction were unknown, — a secret that I shall only deliver up to good authorities. Omission. — The following marginal note by Fourier was omitted in the " Definition of the Monogynes of the three Orders :" — " Monogynes believe themselves superior to polygynes, as the first fiddle deems himself superior to the conductor of the orchestra, because he excels in solo. All monogynes excel in some one function, which persuades them of their own superiority. " Civilization throws all the characters into monogyny. The sportsman values nothing but the chase, and is fero- ciously partial to his dogs, against all other domestic animals ; the gallant dreams of nothing but amorous adventure, and detests all those who do not worship at the shrine of Venus." c c 2 EPIMEDIATE CHAPTER. THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES, OR THE PASSIONAL CHRYSALISES. A DISTRESSING revclation for the civilizees ! It is another of their turpitudes that I am going to unveil : this announce- ment will make them knit their brows^ so true it is that their sham of zeal for truth is only a mask of the hatred they bear to it, and that their general character is political and moral prudery, or emphatic declamation against vice, to hide the fact that they are always ready to wallow in it, where it opens the road to riches and to grandeur. We are about to hold the great judgment between the good and bad characters. Nobody is willing to place himself in the rank of the bad, and I am going to collect there the nineteen-twentieths of the civilizees, without any distinction of those whose virtues are preached up. Let us attack the question without preamble. Robespierre and Nero were, I fancy, very bad characters, but suppose that the man who blames them Avere of the same dye himself? Many people would be greatly hurt if you were to say to them. Your character is the same as that of Robespierre. Nevertheless this is the compliment that I am about to pay to 1,500 Parisians, to 270,000 Frenchmen, and to 3,000,000 of the inhabitants of the globe. Passing from Robespierre to Nero and other virtuosos of wickedness, we shall run a great risk of finding, after an exact inventory, in every civilizee of high renown, a budding cha- racter of the same stamp, that presented some monster in THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES, 389 cruelty, in hypocrisy, or in some sort of crimes ; the reader is about to see that our good folks have only a conditional virtue, subordinate to circumstances, and that all, or almost all, would have equalled the most famous brigands had they been placed in the same circumstances. The compliment not being flattering, we must proceed very methodically. In the demonstration I shall only give in detail a single proof relating to the famous Robespierre ; it will suffice to enable one to judge of the rigorous exactness of the calculi on which we base the accusation. The 810 characters have, like the general order of move- ment, a double development, the harmonic and the subver- sive, which may be compared to the caterpillar and the butterfly, contrary products of a same germ. Nero and Robespierre were, before their wicked development, very commendable men. Never did sovereign govern better than Nero in his earlier years. Never was advocate more esti- mable than Robespierre before entering on his political career. They imitated the germ that would be a butterfly before it became a caterpillar; the human species having this property of passing indifi'erently from the harmonic to the subversive or from the subversive to the harmonic develop- ment ; that is to say, that a man, after ha\dng furnished the abominable career of Nero and of Robespierre, might repass suddenly to a proportionate goodness and become an angel of virtue. It is even very probable that if Robespierre had triumphed on the 9th of Thermidor, he would, after the mas- sacre of his antagonists, have established a liberal and very wise government, by throwing all the odium of the reign of terror on the victims whom he would have brought to punish- ment. Augustus, the vile and treacherous Augustus, has followed this course ; the executioner of Cicero became the idol of Rome, and his name is still the seal of a magnanimity of which he possessed but the semblance. Nothing is better proved than this property inherent in our characters, of a double development, into harmonic and subversive. Between these two developments, there exists a mixt state, which is to both what the chrysalis is to the cater- 390 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. pillar and to the butterfly : it forms tlie transition from the one to the other, it partakes then of the essence of both. Such are the civilizee characters everywhere compressed by education, violence, misery, &c. The immense majority of the civilizees remain in this mixt state, in this passional numbness, which prevents us from being able to appreciate their character. No chance of vent having developed it in either sense, up to that point, it must be judged by the pos- sibility of an alternative, whence it follows, that one who has the degrees of the passional gamut of Nero and Robespierre, would imitate these two wretches if he had the same chances of development in civilization. No one of the 810 characters is bad in harmony, because all find there the chance of a direct development, analogous to that of the butterfly ; but civilization generally provides him only with the chances of inverse or caterpillar develop- ment. Hence if Nero and Robespierre are bad, we ought to estimate as conditional monsters of like degree, all those who have the same title and the same dominants. Let us proceed to the analysis in one single degree. Robespierre is a trigyne. These characters, 24 in number for every phalanx of 810, are of three kinds : — Dominant of composite and papillou . . . . 10 ^ Dominant of composite and cabalist . . . . 8 >24 Dominant of papillon and cabalist 6 J The most dangerous of the three kinds is the second, it is that of Robespierre ; it is in the number of 8 in 810, about a hundredth part, which gives for the entire globe nearly 8,000,000 of Robespierres, male or female, and consequently 6,000 for the city of Paris, peopled with 600,000 souls (in 1814;) then in proportion 200 in the city of Arras, the birth- place of Robespierre. This city may flatter itself to contain at all times 200 citizens, male or female, who would play the same part as their ferocious compatriot, if they received from their infancy an education which put them in a condi- tion to figure on the stage of politics, and if the revolutionary arena were open to them under the same circumstances. THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. 391 There are shades of difference to be observed in this mass. The eight trigynes^ on a pivot of composite and cabalist, are distinguished into four kinds by their third dominant, which is an affective ; so that in eight Robespierres there will be two in the 3rd dominant of ambition, two in the 3rd domi- nant of love, two in the 3rd dominant of parentism, two in the 3rd dominant of friendship. The kind of the true Robes- pierre is the first, that of ambition ; but the three others, in case of lesion and restraints in love, parentism, and friend- ship, will exercise the same atrocities as Robespierre has exercised for the sake of ambition. Thus, although there are in Paris only 1,500 Robespierres of a species, there are 6,000 of one genus who, in the junctures appropriate to their genus, give themselves up to the same furies. This is the detail in figures for one character ; it is evident what it would be for all the others. We may then, whilst continuing this review, suppress the arithmetical reckoning. Let us proceed with the trigynes of the two other kinds. Of all the characters, there are none that turn more generally to mischief than the trigynes and the hexagynes, because there is nothing sentimental in their development. They have for dominants the distributives superior in number to the affectuous ; for instance, — Trigynes, — Two distributives for one ajfectuous. Hexagynes. — Three distributives for two affectuous. Now, every character in which the distributives are domi- nant, is very little susceptible of sensibility ; witness the hexagynes, Frederick and Buonaparte. They may be amorous, and even very violently, but they wall make a sport of crime to satisfy their passion, and love, if it is hindered, will only be in their case a germ of cruelty. Now, civilization opposing them on all hands with almost insurmountable obstacles, you see them all give in to tyranny as soon as they have the means. These characters are in very small numbers, on the scene of politics. The hexagynes, especially, are very rare; you only find one of them in 1,620 persons. As for the trigynes, of the kind of Robespierre, there is only one in 101, but the majority are villagers, people of the lower classes who have 392 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. been unable to find any vent. As to folks of high birth endowed with this character, civilizee education, which is very coercitive, opposes the strongest barriers to them. It is rare for them to rise to the spirit of independence which per- mits the complete development ; it is still rarer for them to find such chances as Robespierre found. They are, never- theless, of the same title, and apt to imitate him in a like occurrence. They are generally distinguished by cunning, finesse, and aptitude for all functions. Those of a third kind (dominant of papillon and cabalist) possess that gaiety which gives a universal charm, but which is allied to the deepest hypocrisy. They are actors by nature, and if only education allows them to develop, they become from the age of twenty years, phenomena of intrigue, especially women. I have no doubt but that the Fredegondas, the Catherine de Medicis, were trigynes, or perhaps hexagynes. These characters have the property of implacable hatreds ; it is, however, easy to offend them, for they are very irritable concerning every truth that unmasks them. Now there are on the globe six millions of this species, and ten millions of the first kind of the tri- gyne less evil than these. Here are already twenty-four millions of beings, of whom fourteen are monsters more or less tinselled, who on occasion will make a jest of all crimes, and ten who will remain but little behind in mischief. On surveying the other titles, namely, the monogyne character, conditional wickedness will be found there to be in a much greater majority, and it will be seen that the seven-eighths of civilizees would become monsters fit to be suffocated, if they were in full subversive development. Their pretended virtue has no other guarantee than the constraint which compresses this development, and restrains them in the condition of passional chrysalises. Un- fortunate truth for the champions of perfectibility, who pre- tend that the civilizee society raises man to perfection ! Independently of the irrefutable proofs which confound the fine wits, such as the poverty of peoples, the general falsehood of relations, the triumph of injustice and op- pression, the necessity of oppressive measures, &c., let us THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES, 393 attend to the ground I have just pointed out, to this ge- neral compression of characters whereof the civilizee order is forced to stifle the vent, because they would develop themselves subversively. Can one reasonably see in such an order, the nature of man, his perfection, his ulterior destina- tion? Is not this imitating the sophists, who would pretend that the chrysalis is the supreme perfectibility of the insect, because it is in a state of lethargy and less disgusting, less injurious than the caterpillar? Our sham savans, on this question, adopt, without doubt- ing it, the opinion of the barbarians whom they ridicule, — the excellence of immobility. It is well known that the Chinese, according to this principle, will not adopt writing, nor the Turks, printing; and that the spirit of political immo- bility perpetuates, with all of them, absurdities in customs and opinions. Our philosophers, do they not fall into the same madness when they establish as a pledge of social good and of ulterior perfectibility, this passional immovability, this general compression of the characters that the civilizee order requires ? The compression is general with a very few exceptions ; in fact, all the people are compressed, and as a proof, we see them, at the least gleam of liberty, take a destructive deve- lopment, pillage, devastate. They would suddenly overthrow the social system, if they were not restrained by constables and gibbets. It is necessary, therefore, to maintain in the chrysalis state, or the impossibility of development, this immense majority whom we call the people. The bourgeois class is compressed in another sense, for it marches only towards the ways of falsity. The men in affairs of interest, the women in affairs of love ; all things contend in cunning in the bourgeoisie. This class is consumed by the desire to raise itself to fortune, to assimilate to the great; it is then on one side, deprived of development, and on the other, it only obtains partial development by ways of falsity, which attest the hinderance opposed to its full developments. The opulent and not numerous class takes some develop- ment ; but, on its own avowal, it is a sink of vices, and the 394 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. philosophers address them continually with the reproach thereof. It is nevertheless the only one of the three that reaches a half development. What would be its depravation if the vent were complete? Convinced of this danger, our undertakers of perfectibility opine that it is necessary to stifle the natural character, keep the social world in pas- sional immobility in the crysalis state. What do they end by? organizing universal pruderies and shams. Young girls are well catechized, moralized by the priests, the fathers and the philosophers ; but if some incident frees them from all check, removes every superior from them, they become Messalinas and Phrynes. Young men, in their college years, have been imbued with philosophical maxims respecting the contempt of riches and delights ; but if, on leaving college, you give them full swing, tandem custode remoto, they go the following moment and wallow in de- bauchery, and soon after in crime, in order to rise to fortune. Behold the constant results of education ; it has no other levers than those of the Algerine policy, it only operates as long as constraint subsists. Yet it stuns us with principles termed liberal, and which are but germs of falsity. When man preserves the impressions of this wily equivocal education, it is composed of five contra- dictory impressions.* The most influential is that of the fathers who form their sons according to the wiles decorated with the name of prudence and of wisdom; fathers, convinced that for- tune is the first pledge of happiness in civilization, all unite to fashion the son to docility, yea, even unto hypocrisy, and frequently to plunder, as is the case in the families connected with commerce and the bar. Public education, indeed, opposes some check of maxims to these grasping impulses, but it is soon confounded by the usage of the world, which reduces to the rank of visions all these theories revived from antiquity, respecting the resisting of the passions. All that remains of this conflict in institutions, is the art of disguising characters, universal hypocrisy, or an impudent display of virtues, of which one is deprived. Every merchant maintains, whilst he * See the Treatise on Unity. THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. 395 is wheedling you, that he never lies, and that he sells to oblige and not to gain ; every lawyer calls himself honest, and wonders at his being suspected ; every financier denies that he adds noughts to his figures; every judge pretends that he is exempt from passions and from venality ; every farmer of the revenue calls himself a faithful administrator; and every wife, a faithful spouse. God knows how much truth there is in all that. What shall we think of the science of perfecti- bility which has established this universal foolishness, this masquerade of characters, and which obtains from man only a vice of hypocrisy from the moment it abandons him to the influence of contradictory principles ; in a double sense, in public, and in domestic morals that have been inculcated into him? How has he been able to delay recognizing hitherto that there is a radical vice, either in science, or in the social system, or in both, and that a research for a new science of political and moral institution, or of a new social order, or rather of both, must be encouraged ? The most rem_arkable effect of this political chaos is, that the seven-eighths of men cannot develop their characters in any sense. They find themselves reduced to a bastard con- dition or expectant stagnation. They cannot take the natural or harmonic development, the ways of truth and liberty, be- cause these are incompatible with the civilizee order : neither can they take the ways of vice, fraud, plunder, debauchery, &c. ; these ways being open only to the very few who possess fortune, or the chances of half liberty. Thus the seven-eighth of the polished world are reduced to a passional immobility, which is the antipode of nature and of destiny, unless we wish to suppose God an enemy of the movement, and a friend of stagnation, which would be the most monstrous of heresies. What disgraceful conclusions for man and for science, when we examine this visible perfectibility, when we make the analysis of its elements, of its mechanism, and of its results ! Without engaging in the maze of criticism, let us lead back the debate to the special object of this chapter, to the problem of the eventual development of the characters, of 396 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. the more or less infamous part they would all play in the cases mentioned of Nero and of Robespierre^ the case of a development beset with obstacles. Nero seemed to be good : he was so, really and condi- tionally, for all characters have the property of the double development. He had taken the good way, the harmonic slope, but a slight obstacle develops him in counter-march ; the reproaches of Agrippina, the remonstrances of Seneca irritate him and carry him on into all foul deeds. Robespierre presents a long career as an estimable lawyer ; suddenly ob- stacles put in the way of his ambition, make of him the most sanguinary of executioners. What are then the virtuous characters in civilization, if the slightest incident transforms them thus into sinks of vice ? and can we doubt that all our sages have been only conditional sages who, in other circum- stances, would have equalled the crimes of the greatest villains. Those who have been good, like Titus and Fenelon, have been so only for want of obstacles, or owiag to obstacles that only half irritated them ; a more violent shock would have thrown them into crime. I have observed that if we were to class the characters of all the known villains, each one in the rank that he occupies in the 810 notes of the general scale, we should see that the majority of virtuous men are of the same title as such and such a wretch, and would, in a similar case, have given into the same excesses. If they have persevered in good, notwith- standing all obstacles, it was because the channels of perse- cution and of vengeance were not opened to them. There is then no essentially good character in civilization, because this society can, in divers cases, cast each of the 810 into the ways of crime. This effect cannot take place in harmony ; but as a compensation to this fact which invalidates all renowns, there is not either any essentially bad character, because civilization could keep each of its criminals in the bastard or chrysalis state, which paralyzes their development. Let us suppose that the French Revolution, and all other subsequent ones, its ramifications, had not burst forth, how many famous criminals would have remained good citizens. THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. 397 how many great men would have vegetated in obscimty? Pichegrue would have remained in the obscure character of an artillery serjeant, without being able to become an officer, because he had no titles of nobility. Buonaparte would have remained a captain of artillery, renowned for his enlighten- ment and his activity. Thus vices, like virtues, being only accidental and conditional, all the blame of vices falls on civilization, which is more guilty than the criminal, in as far as it has opened to him the way of crime, which harmony would not open ; and, on the other hand, the honor of the virtues is but accidental, and not essential in virtuous men, for it cannot be doubted that they would have fallen into vice, had they met with the chances capable of drawing away their characters in that direction; chances that exist for each one of the 810, in the civilized order. Objection. — There are then no characters essentially good or bad, and according to your doctrine, Tiberius is as preci- ous as Antoninus, to judge them abstractedly in the relation of accidental uses, which might develop them both in an opposite sense to the course they have followed? Nothing is more true, since the greater number of the wicked, Robe- spierre, for instance, were entirely good, so long as the uses of mixt and composite development lasted ; the chrysalis state, which did not put in action their vicious gamut, which gamut would have been able in the harmonic condition to yield in vir- tues the equivalent of what it has yielded in vices in civilization. What ! do not noble souls like Henry IV. or Fenelon, display more beautiful germs than the souls of so many social monsters who have disgraced the earth ? There are two answers to this question ; the first is, that Tiberius, in harmony, will be just as noble and more valuable than Fenelon ; you must then accuse not Tiberius, but civi- lization, which knows not how to make use of this rich cha- racter, which is an ambiguous trimixt. As to Nero, he will be more precious than Henry IV. : both are tetragynes ; but the note Nero, having two distributives in its four dominants, is more precious than the note Henry, which has only one distributive and three aflfectuous. Thus, in the case of har- 398 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. monic development, Nero excels in usefulness in the me- chanism of a vortex. Second reply. — The objection, null in an abstract sense, becomes just in a concrete sense; that is to say, certain characters of like degree, as Henry IV. and Nero, are of very opposite use in the civilizee mechanism ; in which case, Henry has for good certain germs of preference, and for evil certain germs of aversion, included in the property of ajfectuous dominance. It extends to one-eighth of the characters, to those who have many affectuous in dominants or sub-domi- nants ; they form the class of civilizee liberals. But there exist nevertheless for them chances of entire corruption, that would carry them away without this support, — this property of affectuous dominance, which is, in the religious style, a sort of liberal grace, spread over one-eighth of human beings, into whom it inoculates the tendency to virtue in civilization. The distribution of this grace is not fortuitous, and I could point out what are, in general scale, the characters or notes endowed with this happy property, brilliant in civilization, but null in harmony, where everything glitters with virtues and with a liberal spirit, and where Tiberius contributes as much as Marcus Aurelius to universal philanthropy. But whither tends, you will say, this subtle theory by which you seem to lower all the men who have practised virtue, and absolve all those who have practised vice, by in- sisting on the accidental influences that might have been able to corrupt the good and ameliorate the bad ? Every brigand will be able to invoke your system, in order to steal and assas- sinate on the high way, and say, " It is not I who am in the wrong; it is civilization, which only opens to me the chance of assassinating, in order to attain my three centres of attrac- tion. I must march in some way to the end to which God impels me. If there is crime in the murders that I commit, cause all the governors and legislators to be hanged, who have organized this civilization, in which I can only take my deve- lopment by the ways of assassination." Those who raise this objection will think they oppose me with a good jest, and they will only strengthen my thesis. THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. 399 which tends neither to justify the civilizee crimes^ nor ci^dli- zation that produces them ; but to shew the inconsistency of founding speculations of social good on an order that is thoroughly infected with vicious chances, open to each of the 810 characters. It tends to make the necessity felt of rally- ing round the natural order — the mechanism of harmony — whichj opening to the 810 characters careers of concord and unity only (ways of truth and justice combined), will found the social link upon the practice of these natural virtues, or virtues of attraction. Now, when this theory, the discovery of which would never have been augured, is delivered to the human race, what would be the perfidy of men of science, if by detractions they retarded the experiment on which de- pends the issue of civilization, and the advent of human nature to real happiness ? Ah ! what is real happiness, if not the full development of all the characters and their harmonic issue in the ways of justice and of truth, which will become the pledge of opulence and pleasures in the societary order pre-ordained by God, and revealed by the synthesis of at- traction ? OF THE PREJUDICES AND PERCEPTIONS RELATIVE TO SYMPATHIES AND ANTIPATHIES. People have committed the same folly with regard to sympathies as with regard to passional attraction ; they have made the subject a jest, instead of making it a study : nothing therefore has been discovered on this branch of the move- ment. It is not for want of perceptible indications, for on every hand it may be seen that there exist regular germs of sympathy, especially in contrast. But there are other sym- pathies than those of contrast; to discriminate and classify them has not even been thought of, still less the study of their mechanism. Two facts have concurred in causing the neglect of all study on this subject; one is, the institution of permanent marriage ; the other, the spirit of romantic ideahty. In conformity with these ideas and customs, people have at- 400 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. tempted to create a sort of worship for perpetual and exclusive sympathies, which are absolutely impossible. An amorous sympathy may indeed be perpetual, but not exclusive, unless it be with simpletons, or passional imbeciles. The sympathies of friendship, of ambition, and of fami- lism, have hardly been mentioned ; they have neither been studied, nor even ridiculed. The sympathies of love alone, have been partially attended to ; it is on this branch of sym- pathy, therefore, that the greatest errors exist, for in every problem of passional movement, the civilizees are always less bewildered on questions which have been neglected, than on those which have been systematically obscured by sophistry and prejudice. The romantic coloring given to ideal types of sympathy in the affection of love, has caused them to be ridiculed, and thence it happens that we have treated lightly and neglected a great question, the regular study of which might, even in case of partial failure, have led to the successful discovery of several branches of passional attraction. The first step to be made, was that of classification. It has been already seen that the sympathies are of three orders, adapted to the three distributive passions ; after which come the genera and the species. In no one of the three orders are the sympathies perpetual and exclusive ; they are sometimes constant, and sometimes of short duration. In certain cases sympathy is most ephemeral, and varies from one day to another. The second order of sympathy, that of alternation, is particularly subject to these frequent variations. In the absence of a regular science to explain these variations and varieties of sympathy, Avhich should be procured for the dif- ferent characters, we frequently find in civilized nations, men, well acquainted with the world of pleasure, become sick and tired of it, complaining of ennui and vacuity, because they have only been able to form insignificant liaisons, devoid of charm and lasting sympathy. That is the rock of disap- pointment for all civilizee Sybarites; they fall incessantly into simple voluptviousness while seeking for combined hap- piness. A sumptuous feast only produces a cold and Ian- THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. 401 guishing assemblage of guests ; a series of amorous intrigues only leaves the soul in a state of void and often of disgust. In harmony, we ought to find at every step these charms and these delights, so rare in civilizee society, even with the favor- ites of fortune. Why are so many of the civilizees deceived in their affec- tions ? and why do they so often suddenly feel an aversion for those whom they have loved? It is because in their liaisons of sympathy they have neither thought of successions or variations of order, nor of the series of genera, nor of the scales of shades in species, nor of the ambiguous links or transitions, nor of the immense field of multiple sympathies which amalgamate with the homogeneous affections and in- ferior degrees, nor, finally, of the link of general gradation, which is the guide to unity. None of these things are either known or observed in the present confused state of feelings and affections in their souls. After having passed through some of the phases of life and the degrees of a career, they no longer find consecutive degrees, well assorted in vicinal shades ; they are in the posi- tion of a man who, in mounting a long ladder, has put his foot upon the seventh step, and then finds an interval of seven degrees, without a step ; he is obliged to descend, be- cause the intermediate steps are wanting. This is frequently the case with civilizees in the gradation of their pleasures ; the absence of method and progression disconcerts them, and throws them into void and ennui — hypochondriacal misan- thropy. Now method — we cannot too strongly insist upon it — consists in the observance of the three distributive pas- sions and of unityism, which requires gradation. Such is the rule we ought to follow in the study of human sympathies, the full development of which is indispensable to happiness. Few theories have been so much desired as that of the sympathies and the antipathies of human nature. We have become hopeless on this head, from an excess of longing. Were we to know it well, it Avould be almost useless in the present state of things ; we should not be able, in civi- VOL. II. D D 402 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. lizee society, to regulate day by day the sympathies of friend- ship, love, ambition, and parental affection, according to the wants and yearnings of each individual. There are then, in the problem we are now engaged on, two conditions to be fulfilled ; the one is, to discover and explain the regular sys- tem of human sympathies ; the other, to establish the means of forming them day by day, and freely, without any obstacle; these means are only to be found in the establishment of associative harmony. To attain this end, practical harmony proceeds by regular calculations to the observations and the classification of the sympathies. It has the secret of discovering and of putting in communication those persons whose sympathies are either accidental or constant. I shall give a chapter on the appli- cation of this branch of science at the end of the third division. It often happens, in the present state of society, that a man complains of the want of mutual sympathy in the affec- tion of love, while his natural sympathetic, or the woman whose nature would exalt his imagination, is perhaps living in the very next house without his knowing it, or being able to frequent her. Civilizee society, as far as individual liaisons are concerned, is a sort of maze, in which those who seek for sympathy may call and hear each other's voice, without being able to come together. There are many characters amongst us, who never once, in the whole course of their existence, find an opportunity of forming one perfect union of sympathy in either love or friendship : differences of fortune and ob- stacles of prejudice oppose insurmountable barriers to these assortments of sympathy, which in harmony will form them- selves spontaneously between all persons who are mutually sympathetic. The great majority of civilizees, disappointed in not hav- ing formed these liaisons of sympathy, try to persuade them- selves that such delights are not essential to human happiness. If they be advanced in years, they persuade themselves that love is not suited to old age; that we must rid our souls of this THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. 403 delusive passion. Every sophist gives his remedy for this disease. One exclaims, N' avons nous pas le vin, Et la chasse, et la table Et Tamitie, ce don divin ?* — Sedaine. But these three means are not within the reach of all. Every man has not at his command a pack of hounds and a well furnished table, and even amongst those Avho enjoy these advantages, we do not find many who content themselves with this pretended remedy, since all those who possess the pleasui'e of the chace with ample cheer, take care to have a mistress also, a paid mistress, if they are too old to gain the affections of a woman from pure love. It is therefore self- deception to persuade oneself that the inward cravings for sympathy are not essential, but imaginary passions. Other pleasures substituted in their stead, do not fill the void left in the soul. Now, the problem of happiness is to give the soul content, and not to cheat it by delusions. Some people, irritated by the impossibility of success, come at length, to disregard the passion and persuade them- selves that they despise it, as Buftbn, in his old age, was of opinion that men should despise women. I will not repeat his words, although they are those of an immortal genius ; the more trivial they are, and tmworthy of that great man, the more they prove that the civilizees are deluded by the void in their souls, and seek, like Buffon, to deceive them- selves with regard to the reality of this void, by dint of flimsy sophistry and prejudice. This wrong notion of Buffon is common to aged civilizees, who mutually excite each other to look upon love as a sensual passion only, and thus to lose sight of that spiritual charm which they have lost, and which they can no longer hope to excite in the heart of a mistress. This crabbed reaction against the loss of sympathy, throws old people into the pursuit of simple pleasures, such as those of eating and drinking, and other merely sensual delights : * Have we not wine, And the chace, and the table. And friendship, that gift divine ? D D 2 404 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. foolish dreamers, who imagine they have triumphed over love, and only show more plainly how much they suffer from the want of sympathy. Although the sympathies of love have been most observed, and are almost the only ones that have been remarked, there are nevertheless numerous varieties of sympathy in each of the three other cardinal affections of the heart, friendship, ambition, and parental affection. The four affections are equally necessary to the happiness of life. A man can only be perfectly happy in so far as he enjoys well assorted sym- pathies of three different orders, in each of the four cardinal affections : sympathies of the alternating order, of the com- posite, and of the emulative orders, in each of the affections. Thus, for instance, in the affection of love, it is not enough to enjoy one sort of sympathy alone, in order to be happy. Petrarch loved Laura and was beloved by her; they mutually loved each other at first sight, and there never was an instance of more perfect sympathy. And yet Petrarch loved other women at the same time, particularly one, by whom he had two sons. His connection with this woman did not destroy the bonds of sympathy which united him with Laura. These were two different sorts of sympathy in the affection of love. It would require another, and perhaps several other sorts of sympathy, to raise Petrarch <-to the full height of happiness in love ; it would also be necessary that the possession of Laura should not be denied to him by the intervention of a jealous husband; that he should enjoy the love of other women, in periodical changes or the alternate order of sympathies ; per- haps he did enjoy in secret, these various sorts of sympathy. It would also be necessary for Petrarch to enjoy many other varieties of love in the order of emulative sympathy, so that, on the chapter of this one affection only, we should have to fill many pages with the conditions of perfect sympathy and happiness in love, of which Petrarch was deprived. How great then were the voids of sympathy in the other branches of affection in Petrarch's soul, friendship, ambition, and fami- lism; and how far must we be removed from happiness, when wc reflect that the most fortunate of lovers have experienced THE SOCIAL PREJUDICKS. 405 SO many privations of sympathy on this one pointy if they were polygynes of the cardinal order ? for it is certain that the monogynes are more easily satisfied with few varieties of sympathy, but they are also more disconsolate in the absence of desired affections. It is the same with the three other cardinal passions. What father is sufficiently provided with filial sympathies ? We hear nine-tenths of them complain that not one of their children is assorted with them in character and inclinations, and that not one renders them love for love. It is much worse with those who have no children. They feel in the sympathy of parentism, a void so much the more complete, as the sympathy of parentism includes both natural children and those who are adopted from cabalistic motives of affection. Shall I speak of the sympathies of friendship ? they are still as rare as they were in the time of Socrates, who deemed it impossible to fill his small house with true friends. Fal- sity, the quicksand on which all friendship is wrecked, is stiU more active in our mercantile age than it was in the times of Socrates. The sympathies of ambition are, with us, but temporary conspiracies, leagues of spoliation, which offer neither affection nor devotedness, nor anything that can excite enthusiasm. Industrial associates, in civilizee society, are nothing less than vultures united momentarily by the thirst for gold, and always ready to deceive one another in the division of the spoil. There exist then, in civilization, only imperceptible gleams of sympathetic happiness. Sym- pathies, however, are not the sole branch of happiness neces- sary for man, and when we consider that our privation is the same in aU the other branches, how great is the impudence of those literary buffoons, who pretend that the civilizee society is the perfection of perfectibility ? Nevertheless the germs of good exist amongst us. The 810 characters, upon which is based the entire mechanism of the sympathies, may be found together in every country, in every village of 1,000 inhabitants; and if we consider, how far every inhabitant of this village is, from having his assort- ment of sympathies of the three orders in the four cardinal 406 THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. passions, we shall have the measure of the profound igno- rance of our sages with regard to the passional mechanism, and the immense distance which separates us from happiness. The theories that I can give on the sympathies, and on the method of organizing their regular play, will be very restricted, until we have fully determined the various scales of the 810 characters. Meanwhile, I shall limit myself to set- ting forth some general principles, with regard to the simple and the combined orders ; every one may perceive the appli- cations of which these principles are susceptible in a vortex, which opposes and brings into play the 810 characters, in every sense best suited for developing their germs of sym- pathy. We shall treat principally of those of love, because they are the only ones to which some attention has hitherto been given; they are, in truth, the most interesting, but they ought not to absorb exclusively our study. Because one flower is the most beautiful, that is no reason why we should disregard all the others, according to the custom of the French ladies, who love roses only, admire roses only, and disdain all the other flowers : they have their merits notwith- standing, although they may be unknown to the French ladies — true Vandals in botany — owing to their exclusive mania for roses. It is not possible to treat regularly of sympathies without treating at the same time of antipathies. This is another principle forgotten by the civilizees, who are quite aware, however, that in regidar theory, the counter-proof ought to be joined to the proof. Let us add, that the antipathies have a multitude of employments in the mechanism of harmony. In order to enhance the enjoyments of sympathy, it is essen- tial to determine, for each of the 810 characters, as many antipathic as there are sym,pathic natures for each particular character. It is, especially, in love that we should know how to dis- tinguish the antipathies. They have magnificent employments in that affection, and principally that of diffracted sympathy, or love between antipathetic and inconcialiablc persons ; as THE SOCIAL PREJUDICES. 407 between a very virtuous man and a very depraved woman ; a love which establishes itself in the highest degree, when it is sustained by physical affinity. In harmony a regular use is made of this kind of sympathy. It is frequently the one necessary to those persons who are surfeited (blase) with one kind of aftection, having passed through all the degrees of its variety. We shall proceed to reduce the fundamental mechanism of the sympathies and antipathies to four theorems ; two for the simple, and two for the combined. I shall treat of the distinctions of order and of genera, supported by some appli- cations in the disciplines of love, which is the most interesting branch in the study of sympathy. Let us observe, moreover, that I shall treat of the four theorems in a general manner, without regard to the particular distinctions of the three kinds ; (of the composite, the papillon, and the cabahst) we shall subsequently pass on to the analysis of these three kinds.* * The Treatise on Sympathies and Antipathies here promised by Fourier, has not yet been published in France : it exists in manuscript however, and is one of the most important of his theories. I read it some years ago, and copied it entirely, as it is not likely to be published soon. It is quite as important a treatise as that of the scale of characters, and much more accurate as an analysis of facts and feelings, though imbued with the same errors concerning the liberty of the affections. Absolute liberty is incompatible with imperfection. Fourier has overlooked this fact. He supposes the attractions of the soul to be quite perfect, and thence entitled to be free ; but discipline is just as positive a pai't of Nature as attraction; law is not less positive than liberty. Divine Nature is no doubt perfect in both law and liberty, but human nature and society are progressive in perfection, and therefore, relatively, more or less imperfect. In physical mechanics, statics are not less essential than dynamics ; in social mechanics, discipline is quite as natural as liberty. The present law of marriage may be most imperfect, and the inter- course between the sexes badly regulated in society ; but Fourier's ideas of liberty in the affections are exaggerated beyond measure. Absolute liberty is only possi- ble with absolute perfection, and discipline is naturally stringent in proportion to the imperfections it is necessary to restrain and keep within the boundaries of order. Fourier's theory of social liberty lacks wisdom in regard to moral dignity and purity ; his theory of social discipline is fanciful and inefficient. His writmgs are, however, highly interesting and suggestive. — H. D. ON THE TRANSITIONS AND APPARENT DISORDERS THE UNIVERSE. CHAPTER I. ON THE TRANSITIONS AND APPARENT DISORDERS OF TIIE UNIVERSE. It is necessary to add, as a supplement to the exposition of the attributes of God, an examination of the apparent dis- orders of his Creation; such as transitions, subversions, diffractions, and other material and passional results of move- ment, which greatly astonish poor human nature, and appear to it as so many contradictions to the character of justice attributed to the Godhead. A superficial mind thinks that it discovers a host of defects in creation ; as, for instance, the 130 sorts of serpents and the 43 varieties of bugs. I have observed, on a previous occasion, that these results proceed from the hieroglyphical unity, according to which the Creator must assign to the ages of limbo (lymbej and subversion, a furniture which presents a faithful mirror of the play of the twelve subversive passions. Many other "vdces, or pretended vices, become the objects of our criticism, which in no instance is more misplaced than in reference to the transitions, which, though censured in general by men, are one of the sublime perfections of Divine Wisdom, and which constitute a complementary attribute in addition to the primary attributes of the Divinity. It is desirable, for the sake of regularity, to present a table of the divine attributes, in the following order : — Complementary attribute — Transitism. Essential, radical attribute — Impulsion. 412 TRANSITIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. . r The universality of Providence^ ^^ 'i The economy of means, Attributes -rk- ^ -u i.- • f ai. ^Distributive justice.* Focal Attribute — The progressive unity of the system. It is by means of transitions that God is enabled to con- vert to advantage, those instruments which are apparently the most contemptible ; this is seen in the case of falsity, which enters successfully, in the proportion of one-sixteenth, in various results of harmonic movement. Men's minds are so blinded to all that relates to transition, progressive unity, and the other bases of universal harmony, that we see them delighted by dreams, excluding all these principles, amongst others by the chimera of a perpetual spring, which would be the absence of all progression and transition, — the token of universal ruin; but as the civilizeesf have no elementary notion concerning the harmony of the universe, there is no kind of absurdity which does not obtain credit with them, when it presents a specious appearance. In order properly to consider the nature of transition, let us distinguish it from subversion, with which it may easily be confounded. The following table designates this difference : Subversion. Transition. Harmony. Night. Twilight. Day. Caterpillar. Chrysalis. Butterfly. Comet. Concentrated body. Planet. Winter. Half season. Summer. * (Marginal Note of Fourier.) — It is useless to form an attribute of transit- ism ; it is the result of distributive calculations. In another part of the manuscript, at page 31, the following passage is found crossed over : — " We must add to the primary attributes of God, transitism, or the essential employment of transitions, as a general link of the divisions of the movement; and we ought to class transitism amongst the attributes apart, and at their head, since it is the initial and final of all effects of movement." — f By the word civilizee, the author implies men born and bred amidst the political and social institutions, which belong to the most advanced nations of Europe in the present day. The term describes a denizen of a state of society superior to the anarchy and licence of savage life, and the despotism and slavery of the patriarchal and barbarous state, on the one hand ; and inferior to the pro- gressive developments of harmony, or the higher and future destiny of the race, on the other. — Translator. TRANSITIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. 413 It is impossible to assign a fixed proportion between the three springs of movement. Transition is commonly in the ratio of one-seventh compared to harmony, or one-eighth of their collective sum. As regards subversion, its duration varies from one-eighth to one-third of harmony; but in a general estimate, founded on the collective character of the universe, subversive results bear only the proportion of one- eighth to those that are harmonic. Certain series of move- ment offer only transitions at their extremities. Others have transition and subversion; for example, in the course of human life, divided into a series of sixteen periods or ages, eight of which are ascending and eight descending, the limits are formed by two transitions, as follows : — Anterior transition — From to 6 years. Ascending vibration — From 6 to 50 years. Descending vibration — From 50 to 7G years. Posterior transition — From 76 to 80 years. Two intermediary transitions may be added to these two transitions of the limits or extremities, as follows : — From the first phase, or infancy to youth r In this case the From the third phase, or maturity to<^ transition is re- caducity. L doubled. This is not the case with respect to the divisions of the day, where the transition is simple. A series of twenty-four hours gives us two transitions and two subversions, according to the following explanation applied to the equinox, or period when the days are of equal duration with the nights : — Supra night, or anterior subversion — From midnight to 5 o'clock in the morning. Dawn, or anterior transition — From 5 to G o'clock in the morning. Ascending vibration — From 6 to 12 o'clock, a.m. Descending vibration — From 12 to 6 p.m. Twihght, or posterior transition — From G to 7 p.m. Infra night, or posterior subversion — From 7 p.m. to midnight. The social career of the globe is subject to transitions and 414 TRANSITIONS OF THE UNIVERSE, subversions, the position of which is not in accordance with the plan that T have laid down for the day. The principles of the movement are one, but their application varies in a thousand ways. Thus the career of human life offers two subversions very applicable to the course of our corporeal existence. You find the state of ascending subversion in the nine months of gestation which precede birth, and during which the body is really existing, though amphibious and deprived of air. The state of descending subversion is that of the inhumation and decomposition of bodies, and the metempsychosis of the soul. It is important to clearly establish this difference between subversions and transitions. It is because men have con- founded them that they have not been able to reason about either of them ; and to complete this definition, it is neces- sary to add to them an effect similar to that which is called castling the king in the game of chess. In physics, diffrac- tion or light, which springs from the excess of darkness, — appearance of good in the thickest of evil, — instantaneous light of harmony piercing the centre of subversion. I mul- tiply these definitions for those who, not having read treatises on natural philosophy, are ignorant of the meaning of dif- fraction, which is a bright and full light, springing from the excess of darkness ; as, for example, when a plumage of black feathers, or a hat of black felt, being placed between the eye and the sun, reflect like a prism of crystal the seven rays on their edge. Diffraction ought, in consequence of the unity of system in the movement, to occur equally in the passional as in the material world ; and this is a very perceptible result, which is proved by daily experience. In antiquity, at the height of political corruption, the social virtues were displayed in full lustre in the case of Aristides, at Athens; Burrhus, at the court of Nero; in J. J. Rousseau, in the eighteenth century; and in the case of many others, as I'Hopital and others, whom I scarcely venture to name, because before placing implicit faith in virtue we ought to know its secret motives. I have also little confidence in the virtues of Cincinnatus, which TRANSITIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. 415 were somewhat forced by circumstances. I should admii'c^ in preference, Hippocrates refusing the presents of Artaxerxes : [interlined, Las Casas.] However this may be, it is certain that the excess of depravity engenders diffracted virtue or schismatic virtue, which breaks its lance in the face of a per- verse world, and exclaims, in the words of J. J. Rousseau, " These people are not men ! There is something wrong, the cause of which we cannot discover.'^ Moliere has well sketched this noble character, in his master-piece of the Misanthrope ; a virtuous and honorable man, who, revolting against the perfidy of civilization, stands apart from a world where virtue is not practicable ; a world, where it is necessary either to mask or dress up nrtue, or renounce its practice, since it cannot appear there uncovered, or speak with openness. The misanthrope is the general type or focus of diffracted characters. These are found in detail in each branch of the passional relation. It is not uncommon to find, amongst the most dissolute women, a young person revolting against this depravity, and severe on matters pertaining to honor. Amongst the financial agents of the reign of Buonaparte, who were not very scrupulous, men pointed out a Mr. Esteve, who was a monster of probity, and who, in the most intricate administration, had never purloined, or let any person pur- loin, a single halfpenny. All the characters of the eighth degree, called omnigynes, are diffracted (restive), and at open schism with civilized perversity. I do not say verbal schism, but a schism of conduct carried out in action. Unhappily there are but few omnigynes ; nature gives us a couple in 36,000 persons. This couple has no employment for the woman, no matronly func- tion, in the present state of things. As to the males, how often this character occurs in the case of an obscure plebeian, whose tendency to noble actions will cause him to be treated as a fool by his equals, and as seditious by his superiors. When Walpole said that he held in his portfolio the price of all the probities of parliament, he was not aware that in the body of representatives, there may sometimes occur an omni- 416 TRANSITIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. gyiiG; against whom all the batteries of Potosi would play in vain. I do not mean to imply that it is strictly necessary to be an omnigyne in order to be incorruptible, but only that this quality is almost certain in the case of an omnigyne. Diffraction, or light generated from the excess of dark- ness, exists then in passional as well as in material nature. A beautiful material result of this principle is seen on our globe, in the aurora borealis ; a luminous meteor, which in the total absence of the sun cuts a night of six months' dura- tion, and comes in the thickest of this night, to shed a bril- liant light on the polar regions. Diffraction is a link by which God unites the results of harmony to those of subver- sion, and connects in some measure midday with midnight. His system being that of establishing universal links in the order of nature, it was necessary that he should invent a procedure for cutting the effects of darkness, and binding them by their centre to the system of harmony. The move- ment would not be completely united without this effect, which, in a harmonic synthesis, will give us the magnificent theory of passional links in the four cardinal affections, or the art of forming alliances between antipathic extremes; of making the beautiful Adonis fall in love with the ugly Urgele. Let us employ a material hypothesis, in order to give a better definition of diffraction. Let us suppose that, in the middle of the night, a meteor, like the ring of Saturn, were to shine for one hour in the hemisphere opposed to the sun, and were to disseminate light during the period of half an hour before and half an hour after midnight ; this pharos would produce the effect which I call ascending and descending diffraction, and which is a superabundance of development. God does not employ it everywhere, but he makes use of it in the principal evolutions. In the same manner that you do not place flower vases on a domestic board, but on a table spread for a festive occasion ; similarly diffraction is a festive addi- tion to movement, whether material or passional. Hence it follows that it is necessarily employed in the pivotal or social movement, which diffracts at both extremities, as will be seen by the following table : — TRANSITIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. 417 Anterior diffraction 1st society Anterior graduated subversion. Philosophical limbo 2, 3, 4, 5 Sub-anterior transition 6 Graduated anterior transitions 7, 8, 9 Vibration of the biharmonic gamut — 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 Ascending and descending foci XY : r'< x. Descending vibration of the biharmonic ga- mut , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Posterior transition 24 Posterior graduated sub-transitions . . . . 25, 26, 27 Posterior graduated subversions, or apocalyptic limbo 28, 29, 30, 31 Posterior diffraction 32 CHARACTERISTIC SCALE OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT. Anterior diffraction citer-Eden . , . . 1 st social period Anterior subversion or philosophical limbos . . 2, 3, 4, 5 Half and whole ascending transition and hyper- J transition, ascending guaranteeism ... 6, 7 Anterior diverging and converging mono-har- monic periods 8, 9 Ascending'^biharmonic periods . 10, II, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 Ascending and descending foci >