The attractiveness of labour was made the pivot of Fourier’s system. Wherever we like to look, whether in the direction of so-called civilised societies or towards barbarian or servile communities, labour is everywhere regarded as a curse. There is no reason why it should be, and in the society of the future it certainly will not be, for men will then labour not because they are constrained to either by force or by the pressure of need or the allurement of self-interest. Fourier’s ideal was a social State in which men would no longer be forced to work, whether from the necessity of earning their daily bread or from a desire for gain or from a sense of social or religious duty. His ambition was to see men work for the mere love of work, hastening to their task as they do to a gala. Why should not labour become play, and why should not the same degree of enthusiasm be shown for work as is shown by youth in the pursuit of sport?[543] Fourier thinks this would be possible if everyone were certain that he would get a minimum of subsistence by his work. Labour would lose all its coercive features, and would be regarded simply as an opportunity for exercising certain faculties, provided sufficient liberty were given everyone to choose that kind of work which suited him best, and provided also the labour were sufficiently diversified in character to stimulate imagination and were carried on in an atmosphere of joy and beauty. The sole object of the Phalanstère, as we have already seen, was to make labour more attractive by creating a new kind of social life in which production as well as distribution would be on a co-operative basis and horticulture would take the place of agriculture. But Fourier was not content to stop at that, and he proceeds to show the importance of combining different kinds of employment. Some of his suggestions are very ingenious; others, on the other hand, are equally puerile. The most notable of these is his proposal to bring individuals together into what he calls groups and series. A person would be allowed to join these groups according to his own individual preferences, and as it would not involve his spending his whole life in any one of them, he would be free to “flit” from one to the other. * * * * * But it is about time we took leave of our guide. We cannot pretend to follow the twists and turns of his labyrinthine psychology, with its dozen passions, of which the three fundamental ones are the desire for change, for order, and for secrecy; nor can we bring ourselves to accept his theodicy, nor his views on climatic and cosmogenic evolution, which was some day to result in sweetening the waters of the ocean, in melting the polar glaciers, in giving birth to new animals, and in putting us in communication with other planets. Yet even this muddy torrent is not without some grain of gold in it.