As a matter of fact nothing could be more peaceful than the prospect which the Phalanstère presents to our view. Anything more closely resembling Owen’s New Harmony or Cabet’s Icaria or Campanella’s Civitas Solis or More’s Utopia would be difficult to imagine. Externally it looks for all the world like a grand hotel—a Palace Hotel on a gigantic scale with 1500 persons _en pension_. One is instinctively reminded of those familiar structures which have lately become such a feature of all summer and winter resorts, containing all manner of rooms and apartments, concert halls and lecture rooms, etc. All of this is described by Fourier with the minutest detail. No restrictions would be placed upon individual liberty. Anyone so choosing could have a suite of rooms for himself, and enjoy his meals in the privacy of his own room—that is, if he preferred it to the _table d’hôte_. Hotel life is generally open only to the few. The Phalanstère would have rooms and tables at all prices to suit all five classes of society, with a free table in addition. A number of people living under the same roof and eating at the same table, and adopting this as their normal everyday method of living, sums up the element of communism which the scheme contained. And the question is naturally asked, Why should Fourier attach such supreme importance to this mode of existence as to make it the _sine qua non_ of his whole system and the key to any solution of the problem? The answer lies in the conviction, which he fully shared with Owen, that no solution is possible until the environment is changed, and so changed that an entirely new type of man will result from it. Economically, of course, life under the same roof can offer to the consumer the maximum of comfort at a minimum of cost. Cooking, heating, lighting, etc., would under such conditions be cheaper and more efficient, and all the worries and anxieties of individual housekeeping would be swept aside. Socially a common life of this kind would gradually teach different persons to appreciate one another. Sympathy would take the place of mutual antipathy, which under the present _régime_, as Fourier eloquently remarks, shows an “ascending scale of hatred and a descending scale of contempt.” Besides, the multiplicity of relations and interests, and even of intrigues, which would occasionally enliven this little world would at any rate make life more interesting.