Chapter XXXIX: Conversion of Brook Farm to Fourierism

At the beginning of our history of the Fourier epoch, we gave an account of the origin of the Brook Farm Association in 1841, and traced its career till the latter part of 1843. So far we found it to be an original American experiment, not affiliated to Fourier, but to Dr. Channing; and we classed it with the Hopedale, Northampton and Skaneateles Communities, as one of the preparations for Fourierism. Now, at the close of our history, we must return to Brook Farm and follow it through its transformation into a Fourierist Phalanx, and its career as a public teacher and propagandist.

In the final number of the _Dial_, dated April 1844, Miss E.P. Peabody published an article on Fourierism, which commences as follows:

"In the last week of December, 1843, and first week of January,
1844, a convention was held in Boston, which may be considered
as the first publication of Fourierism in this region.

"The works of Fourier do not seem to have reached us, and this
want of text has been ill supplied by various conjectures
respecting them; some of which are more remarkable for the
morbid imagination they display than for their sagacity. For
ourselves we confess to some remembrances of vague horror
connected with this name, as if it were some enormous parasitic
plant, sucking the life principles of society, while it spread
apparently an equal shade, inviting man to repose under its
beautiful but poison-dropping branches. We still have a certain
question about Fourierism, considered as a catholicon for evil;
but our absurd horrors were dissipated, and a feeling of genuine
respect for the friends of the movement ensured, as we heard the
exposition of the doctrine of Association, by Mr. Channing and
others. That name [Channing] already consecrated to humanity,
seemed to us to have worthily fallen, with the mantle of the
philanthropic spirit, upon this eloquent expounder of Socialism;
in whose voice and countenance, as well as in his pleadings for
humanity, the spirit of his great kinsman still seemed to speak.
We can not sufficiently lament that there was no reporter of the
speech of Mr. Channing."

At the close of this article Miss Peabody says:

"We understand that Brook Farm has become a Fourierist
establishment. We rejoice in this, because such persons as form
that Association, will give it a fair experiment. We wish it
Godspeed. May it become a University, where the young American
shall learn his duties, and become worthy of this broad land of
his inheritance."

William H. Channing, in the _Present_, January 15, 1844, gives an account of this same Boston convention, from which we extract as follows:

"This convention marked an era in the history of New England.
It was the commencement of a public movement upon the subject of
social reform, which will flow on, wider, deeper, stronger,
until it has proved in deeds the practicability of societies
organized, from their central principle of faith to the minutest
detail of industry and pleasure, according to the order of love.
This movement has been long gathering. A hundred rills and
rivers of humanity have fed it.

"The number of attendants and their interest increased to the
end, as was manifested by the continuance of the meetings from
Wednesday, December 27th, when the convention had expected to
adjourn, through Thursday and Friday. The convention was
organized by the choice of William Bassett, of Lynn, as
President; of Adin Ballou, of Hopedale, G.W. Benson, of
Northampton, George Ripley, of Brook Farm, and James N. Buffum,
of Lynn, as Vice-Presidents; and of Eliza J. Kenney, of Salem,
and Charles A. Dana, of Brook Farm, as Secretaries. The
Associations of Northampton, Hopedale and Brook Farm, were each
well represented.

"It was instructive to observe that practical and scientific men
constantly confirmed, and often apparently without being aware
of it, the doctrines of social science as announced by Fourier.
Indeed, in proportion to the degree of one's intimacy with this
profound student of harmony, does respect increase for his
admirable intellectual power, his foresight, sagacity,
completeness. And for one, I am desirous to state, that the
chief reason which prevents my most public confession of
confidence in him as the one teacher now most needed, is, that
honor for such a patient and conscientious investigator demands,
of all who would justify his views, a simplicity of affection,
an extent and accuracy of knowledge, an intensity of thought, to
which very few can now lay claim. Quite far am I from saying,
that as now enlightened, I adopt all his opinions; on the
contrary, there are some I reject; but it is a pleasure to
express gratitude to Charles Fourier, for having opened a whole
new world of study, hope and action. It does seem to me, that he
has given us the clue out of our scientific labyrinth, and
revealed the means of living the law of love."

The _Phalanx_ of February 5, 1844, refers to the revolution going on at Brook Farm, as follows:

"The Brook Farm Association, near Boston, is now in process of
transformation and extension from its former condition of an
educational establishment mainly, to a regularly organized
Association, embracing the various departments of industry, art
and science. At the head of this movement, are George Ripley,
Minot Pratt and Charles A. Dana. We can not speak in too high
terms of these men and their enterprise. They are gentlemen of
high standing in the community, and unite in an eminent degree,
talent, scientific attainments and refinement, with great
practical energy and experience. This Association has a fine
spiritual basis in those already connected with it, and we hope
that it will be able to rally to its aid the industrial skill
and capital necessary to organize an Association, in which
productive labor, art, science, and the social and the religious
affections, will be so wisely and beautifully blended and
combined, that they will lend reciprocal strength, support,
elevation and refinement to each other, and secure abundance,
give health to the body, development and expansion to the mind,
and exaltation to the soul. We are convinced that there are
abundant means and material in New England now ready to form a
fine Association; they have only to be sought out and brought
together."

From these hints it is evident that the Brook Farmers were fully converted to Fourierism in the winter of 1843-4, and that William H. Channing led the way in this conversion. He had been publishing the _Present_ since September 1843, side by side with the _Phalanx_ (which commenced in October of that year); and though he, like the rest of the Massachusetts Socialists, began with some shyness of Fourierism, he had gradually fallen into the Brisbane and Greeley movement, till at last the _Present_ was hardly distinguishable in its general drift from the _Phalanx_. Accordingly in April, 1844, just at the time when the _Dial_ ended its career, as we have seen, with a confession of quasi-conversion to Fourierism, the _Present_ also concluded its labors with a twenty-five-page exposition of Fourier's system, and the _Phalanx_ assumed its subscription list.

The connection of the Channings with Fourierism, then, stands thus: Dr. Channing, the first medium of the Unitarian afflatus, was the father (by suggestion) of the Brook Farm Association, which was originally called the West Roxbury Community. William H. Channing, the second medium according to Miss Peabody, converted this Community to Fourierism and changed it into a Phalanx. The _Dial_, which Emerson says was also a suggestion of Dr. Channing, and the _Present_, which was edited by William H. Channing, ended their careers in the same month, both hailing the advent of Fourierism, and the _Phalanx_ and _Harbinger_ became their successors.

The _Dial_ and _Present_, in thus surrendering their Roxbury daughter as a bride to Fourierism, did not neglect to give her with their dying breath some good counsel and warning. We will grace our pages with a specimen from each. Miss Peabody in the _Dial_ moralizes thus:

"The social passions, set free to act, do not carry within them
their own rule, nor the pledge of conferring happiness. They can
only get this from the free action upon them of the intellectual
passions which constitute human reason.

"But these functions of reason, do they carry within themselves
the pledge of their own continued health and harmonious action?

"Here Fourierism stops short, and, in so doing, proves itself to
be, not a life, a soul, but only a body. It may be a magnificent
body for humanity to dwell in for a season; and one for which it
may be wise to quit old diseased carcases, which now go by the
proud name of civilization. But if its friends pretend for it
any higher character than that of a body, thus turning men from
seeking for principles of life essentially above organization,
it will prove but another, perhaps a greater curse.

"The question is, whether the Phalanx acknowledges its own
limitations of nature, in being an organization, or opens up any
avenue into the source of life that shall keep it sweet,
enabling it to assimilate to itself contrary elements, and
consume its own waste; so that, phoenix-like, it may renew
itself forever in greater and finer forms.

"This question, the Fourierists in the convention, from whom
alone we have learned any thing of Fourierism, did not seem to
have considered. But this is a vital point.

"The life of the world is now the Christian life. For eighteen
centuries, art, literature, philosophy, poetry, have followed
the fortunes of the Christian idea. Ancient history is the
history of the apotheosis of nature, or natural religion; modern
history is the history of an idea, or revealed religion. In vain
will any thing try to be, which is not supported thereby.
Fourier does homage to Christianity with many words. But this
may be cant, though it thinks itself sincere. Besides, there are
many things which go by the name of Christianity, that are not
it.

"Let the Fourierists see to it, that there be freedom in their
Phalanxes for churches, unsupported by their material
organization, and lending them no support on their material
side. Independently existing, within them but not of them,
feeding on ideas, forgetting that which is behind petrified into
performance, and pressing on to the stature of the perfect man,
they will finally spread themselves in spirit over the whole
body.

"In fine, it is our belief, that unless the Fourierist bodies
are made alive by Christ, 'their constitution will not march;'
and the galvanic force of reaction, by which they move for a
season, will not preserve them from corruption. As the
corruption of the best is the worst, the warmer the friends of
Fourierism are, the more awake should they be to this danger,
and the more energetic to avert it."

Charles Lane in the _Present_ discoursed still more profoundly, as follows:

"Some questions, of a nice importance, may be considered by the
Phalanx before they set out, or at least on the journey, for
they will have weighty, nay, decisive influences on the final
result. One of these, perhaps the one most deserving attention,
nay, perhaps that upon which all others hinge, is the adjustment
of those human affections, out of which the present family
arrangements spring. In a country like the United States of
North America, where food is very cheap, and all the needs of
life lie close to the industrious hand, it is very rare to find
a family of old parents with their sons and daughters married
and residing under the same roof. The universal bond is so weak,
or the individual bond is so strong, that one married pair is
deemed a sufficient swarm of human bees to hive off and form a
new colony. How, then, can it be hoped that there is universal
affection sufficient to unite many such families in one body for
the common good? If, with the natural affections to aid the
attempt to meliorate the hardships and difficulties in natural
life, it is rare, nay, almost impossible, to unite three
families in one bond of fellowship, how shall a greater number
be brought together? If, in cases where the individual
characters are known, can be relied on, are trusted with each
other's affections, property and person, such union can not be
formed, how shall it be constructed among strangers, or
doubtful, or untried characters? The pressing necessities in
isolated families, the great advantages in even the smallest
union, are obvious to all, not least to the country families in
this land; yet they unite not, but out of every pair of
affectionate hearts they construct a new roof-tree, a new
hearth-stone, at which they worship as at their exclusive altar.

"Is there some secret leaven in this conjugal mixture, which
declares all other union to be out of the possible affinities?
Is this mixture of male and female so very potent, as to hinder
universal or even general union? Surely it can not happen, in
all those numerous instances wherein re-unions of families would
obviously work so advantageously for all parties, that there are
qualities of mind so foreign and opposed, that no one could
beneficially be consummated. Or is it certain, that in these
natural affections and their consequences in living offspring,
there is an element so subversive of general Association that
the two can not co-exist? The facts seem to maintain such a
hypothesis. History has not yet furnished one instance of
combined individual and universal life. Prophecy holds not very
strong or clear language on the point. Plato scarcely fancied
the possible union of the two affections; the religious
Associations of past or present times have not attempted it; and
Fourier, the most sanguine of all futurists, does not deliver
very succinct or decisive oracles on the subject.

"Can we make any approximation to axiomatical truth for
ourselves? May we not say that it is no more possible for the
human affections to flow at once in two opposite directions,
than it is for a stream of water to do so? A divided heart is an
impossibility. We must either serve the universal (God), or the
individual (Mammon). Both we can not serve. Now, marriage, as at
present constituted, is most decidedly an individual, and not a
universal act. It is an individual act, too, of a depreciated
and selfish kind. The spouse is an expansion and enlargement of
one's self, and the children participate of the same nature. The
all-absorbent influence of this union is too obvious to be dwelt
upon. It is used to justify every glaring and cruel act of
selfish acquisition. It is made the ground-work of the
institution of property, which is itself the foundation of so
many evils. This institution of property and its numerous
auxiliaries must be abrogated in associative life, or it will be
little better than isolated life. But it can not, it will not be
repealed, so long as marital unions are indulged in; for, up to
this very hour, we are celebrating the act as the most sacred on
earth, and what is called providing for the family, as the most
onerous and holy duty.

"The lips of the purest living advocates of human improvement,
Pestalozzi, J.P. Greaves and others, are scarcely silent from
the most strenuous appeals to mothers, to develop in their
offspring the germs of all truth, as the highest resource for
the regeneration of our race; and we are now turning round upon
them and declaring, that naught but a deeper development of
mortal selfishness can result from such a course. At least such
seems to be a consequence of the present argument. Yet, if it be
true, we must face it. This is at least an inquiry which must be
answered. It is certain, indeed, that if there be a source of
truth in the human soul, deeper than all selfishness, it may be
consciously opened by appeals which shall enforce their way
beneath the human selfishness which is superincumbent on the
divine origin. Then we may possibly be at work on that ground
whereon universal Association can be based. But must not,
therefore, individual (or dual) union cease? Here is our
predicament. It haunts us at every turn; as the poets represent
the disturbed wanderings of a departed spirit. And
reconciliation of the two is not yet so clearly revealed to the
faithful soul, as the headlong indulgence is practiced by the
selfish. It is an axiom that new results can only be arrived at
by action on new principles, or in new modes. The old principle
and mode of isolated families has not led to happy results. This
is a fact admitted on all hands. Let us then try what the
consociate, or universal family will produce. But, then, let us
not seduce ourselves by vain hopes. Let us not fail to see, that
to this end the individual selfishness, or, if so they must be
called, the holy gratifications of human nature, must be
sacrificed and subdued. As has been affirmed above, the two can
not be maintained together. We must either cling to heaven, or
abide on earth; we must adhere to the divine, or indulge in the
human attractions. We must either be wedded to God or to our
fellow humanity. To speak in academical language, the
conjunction in this case is the disjunctive 'or,' not the
copulative 'and.' Both these marriages, that is, of the soul
with God, and of soul with soul, can not exist together. It
remains, therefore, for us, for the youthful spirit of the
present, for the faithfully intelligent and determinedly true,
to say which of the two marriages they will entertain."

In consummation of their union with Fourierism, the Brook Farmers formed and published a new constitution, confessing in its preamble their conversion, and offering themselves to Socialists at large as a nucleus for a model Phalanx. They say:

"The Association at Brook Farm has now been in existence upwards
of two years. Originating in the thought and experience of a
few individuals, it has hitherto worn, for the most part, the
character of a private experiment, and has avoided rather than
sought the notice of the public. It has, until the present time,
seemed fittest to those engaged in this enterprise to publish no
statements of their purposes or methods, to make no promises or
declarations, but quietly and sincerely to realize as far as
might be possible, the great ideas which gave the central
impulse to their movement. It has been thought that a steady
endeavor to embody these ideas more and more perfectly in life,
would give the best answer, both to the hopes of the friendly
and the cavils of the skeptical, and furnish in its results the
surest grounds for any larger efforts.

"Meanwhile every step has strengthened the faith with which we
set out; our belief in a divine order of human society, has in
our own minds become an absolute certainty; and considering the
present state of humanity and of social science, we do not
hesitate to affirm that the world is much nearer the attainment
of such a condition than is generally supposed. The deep
interest in the doctrine of Association which now fills the
minds of intelligent persons every where, indicates plainly that
the time has passed when even initiative movements ought to be
prosecuted in silence, and makes it imperative on all who have
either a theoretical or practical knowledge of the subject, to
give their share to the stock of public information.

"Accordingly we have taken occasion at several public meetings
recently held in Boston, to state some of the results of our
studies and experience, and we desire here to say emphatically,
that while on the one hand we yield an unqualified assent to
that doctrine of universal unity which Fourier teaches, so on
the other, our whole observation has shown us the truth of the
practical arrangements which he deduces therefrom. The law of
groups and series is, as we are convinced, the law of human
nature, and when men are in true social relations their
industrial organization will necessarily assume those forms.

"But beside the demand for information respecting the principles
of Association, there is a deeper call for action in the matter.
We wish, therefore, to bring Brook Farm before the public, as a
location offering at least as great advantages for a thorough
experiment as can be found in the vicinity of Boston. It is
situated in West Roxbury, three miles from the depot of the
Dedham Branch Railroad, and about eight miles from Boston, and
combines a convenient nearness to the city, with a degree of
retirement and freedom from unfavorable influences, unusual even
in the country. The place is one of great natural beauty, and
indeed the whole landscape is so rich and various as to attract
the notice even of casual visitors. The farm now owned by the
Association contains two hundred and eight acres, of as good
quality as any land in the neighborhood of Boston, and can be
enlarged by the purchase of land adjoining, to any necessary
extent. The property now in the hands of the Association is
worth nearly or quite thirty thousand dollars, of which about
twenty-two thousand dollars is invested either in the stock of
the company, or in permanent loans at six per cent., which can
remain as long as the Association may wish.

"The fact that so large an amount of capital is already invested
and at our service, as the basis of more extensive operations,
furnishes a reason why Brook Farm should be chosen as the scene
of that practical trial of Association which the public feeling
calls for in this immediate vicinity, instead of forming an
entirely new organization for that purpose. The completeness of
our educational department is also not to be overlooked. This
has hitherto received our greatest care, and in forming it we
have been particularly successful. In any new Association it
must be many years before so many accomplished and skillful
teachers in the various branches of intellectual culture could
be enlisted. Another strong reason is to be found in the degree
of order our organization has already attained, by the help of
which a large Association might be formed without the losses and
inconveniences which would otherwise necessarily occur. The
experience of nearly three years in all the misfortunes and
mistakes incident to an undertaking so new and so little
understood, carried on throughout by persons not entirely fitted
for the duties they have been compelled to perform, has, we
think, prepared us to assist in the safe conduct of an extensive
and complete Association.

"Such an institution, as will be plain to all, can not by any
sure means be brought at once and full-grown into existence. It
must, at least in the present state of society, begin with a
comparatively small number of select and devoted persons, and
increase by natural and gradual aggregations. With a view to an
ultimate expansion into a perfect Phalanx, we desire to organize
immediately the three primary departments of labor, agriculture,
domestic industry and the mechanic arts. For this purpose
additional capital will be needed, etc.

GEORGE RIPLEY, MINOT PRATT, CHARLES A. DANA.
"_Brook Farm, January 18, 1844._"

Here follows the usual appeal for co-operation and investments. In October following a second edition of this constitution was issued, in the preamble of which the officers say:

"The friends of the cause will be gratified to learn, that the
appeal in behalf of Brook Farm, contained in the introductory
statement of our constitution, has been generously answered, and
that the situation of the Association is highly encouraging. In
the half-year that has elapsed, our numbers have been increased
by the addition of many skillful and enthusiastic laborers in
various departments, and our capital has been enlarged by the
subscription of about ten thousand dollars. Our organization has
acquired a more systematic form, though with our comparatively
small numbers we can only approximate to truly scientific
arrangements. Still with the unavoidable deficiencies of our
groups and series, their action is remarkable, and fully
justifies our anticipations of great results from applying the
principles of universal order to industry.

"We have made considerable agricultural improvements; we have
erected a work-shop sixty feet by twenty-eight for mechanics of
several trades, some of which are already in operation; and we
are now engaged in building a section one hundred and
seventy-five feet by forty, of a Phalanstery or unitary
dwelling. Our first object is to collect those who, from their
character and convictions, are qualified to aid in the
experiment we are engaged in, and to furnish them with
convenient and comfortable habitations, at the smallest possible
outlay. For this purpose the most careful economy is used,
though we are yet able to attain many of the peculiar
advantages of the Associated household. Still for transitional
society, and for comparatively temporary use, a social edifice
can not be made free from the defects of civilized architecture.
When our Phalanx has become sufficiently large, and has in some
measure accomplished its great purposes, the serial organization
of labor and unitary education, we shall have it in our power to
build a Phalanstery with the magnificence and permanence proper
to such a structure."

Whereupon the appeal for help is repeated. Finally, in May 1845 this new constitution was published in the _Phalanx_, with a new preamble. In the previous editions the society had been styled the "Brook Farm Association for Education and Industry;" but in this issue, Article 1