Considered as a purely literary and speculative product, the socialism of Fourier was prior to those both of Owen and Saint-Simon. Fourier’s first work, _Théorie des Quatre Movements_, was published as early as 1808. His system, however, scarcely attracted any attention and exercised no influence till the movements originated by Owen and Saint-Simon had begun to decline. The socialism of Fourier is in many respects fundamentally different from that of Saint-Simon; in the two schools, in fact, we find the two opposing types of socialism which have continued to prevail ever since. Saint-Simonism represented the principle of authority, of centralisation; while Fourier made all possible provision for local and individual freedom. With Saint-Simonism the State is the starting-point, the normal and dominant power; in Fourier the like position is held by a local body, corresponding to the commune, which he called the _Phalange_. In the system of Fourier the _phalange_ holds the supreme and central place, other organisation in comparison with it being secondary and subordinate. The deviser of the _phalange_, François Marie Charles Fourier[1] was a very remarkable man. He was born at Besançon in 1772, and received from his father, a prosperous draper, an excellent education at the academy of his native town. The boy excelled in the studies of the school, and regretfully abandoned them for a business career, which he followed in various towns of France. As a commercial traveller in Holland and Germany he enlarged his experience of men and things. From his father Fourier inherited a sum of about £3000, with which he started business at Lyons, but he lost all he had in the siege of that city by the Jacobins during the Reign of Terror, was thrown into prison, and narrowly escaped the guillotine. On his release he joined the army for two years, and then returned to his old way of life. At a very early age Fourier had his attention called to the defects of the prevalent commercial system. When only five years old he had been punished for speaking the truth about certain goods in his father’s shop; and at the age of twenty-seven he had at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of an immense quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. The conviction grew within him that a system which involved such abuses and immoralities must be radically evil. Feeling that it was his mission to find a remedy for it, he spent his life in the discovery, elucidation, and propagation of a better order; and he brought to his task a self-denial and singleness of purpose which have seldom been surpassed. For the last ten years of his life he waited in his apartments at noon every day for the wealthy capitalist who should supply the means for the realisation of his schemes. The tangible success obtained by his system was very slight. His works found few readers and still fewer disciples.