enthusiasm was awakened for them and they resolved to graft some of his
formulas on their institution. The little Community, with its bright,
cheerful school and its happy members, was not paying its way. There
were philosophers enough in it. There were plenty of sweet, charming
characters and amateur workmen in it, but the hard-fisted toilers and
the brave financiers were absent.

Still, it was not entirely absence of financial success that led the
responsible men of the Community to make the change in the organization
that they did, but truly because the grand and reasonable ideas of the
distinguished Frenchman bore such internal evidences of harmony with
human nature and with God's providence and laws that they carried
conviction to the great and sympathetic minds of Brook Farm. Fourier
argued that there was a sublime destiny for mankind on this earth, that
the Creator was infinitely good, that all the instincts of our nature,
when not subverted by bad conditions, pointed towards that destiny, and
that humanity was on its way upward--that the past progress argued what
the future might be.

I give as illustrations, a few extracts from "The Social Destiny of
Man," by Albert Brisbane, page 269:--"Four societies have existed on
the earth--the savage, patriarchal, barbarian and civilized. Under
these general heads may be classed the various social forms through
which man has progressed up to the present day. _If four have existed
may not a fifth, or even a sixth, be discovered and organized?_
Common sense would dictate that there could, although the world has
entertained a different opinion."

Page 293: "If the barbarian asserts that the lash is the only means of
forcing the slave to labor, the civilized is not far behind him in his