Fourier, if generally adopted, would produce general starvation and soon
reduce the population of Europe to one fourth of its present numbers.
London, which depends for its size on its commercial and political
importance, would become almost as desolate as ancient Thebes.

There was lately an essay published in one of our magazines entitled,
"Why Socialism appeals to Artists," and the reason alleged was that
artists, being more sensitive and delicately organized than most people,
were less capable of enduring the hard struggle with the world which all
are obliged to sustain who make their own way in it. This is no doubt
the true explanation of the Brook Farm enterprise, and it carries with
it its own contradiction. The more realistic sort of literature might
survive in the communistic order, but sculpture and painting, which
depend upon the undivided surplus of production which we call wealth,
would inevitably perish. Even literature would disappear at length, then
science, or at least all advancement of science, precedent in law would
be disregarded, and the dark ages come again. The present organization
of society is the accumulated wisdom of mankind for thousands of years.
Like the language we speak, it was rather an intellectual growth than
the invention of an individual or any number of individuals. Those who
have done the most for it have added but little to the whole. It may be
subverted by revolution for a time, but will always reassert itself
again. It may be amended or modified by reason, but cannot be replaced,
either by the ingenuity of one man or that of a whole generation.

The logic of custom is the most cogent of all reasoning, for it is
inherited in our veins from our ancestors. The man who tries to escape
from it is like a plant being pulled up by the roots. It is exactly this
which writers like Fourier and Henry George leave out of their
reckoning. They see that in individual cases custom is often blind,