Yet his works are full of suggestion and instruction, and will long repay the study of the social economist. His criticisms of the existing system, of its waste, anarchy, and immorality, are ingenious, searching, and often most convincing. In his positive proposals, too, are to be found some of the most sagacious and far-reaching forecasts of the future landmarks of human progress. Most noteworthy are the guarantees he devised for individual and local freedom. The _phalange_ was on the one hand large enough to secure all the benefits of a scientific industry and of a varied common life; on the other it provides against the evils of centralisation, of State despotism, of false patriotism and national jealousy. Fourier has forecast the part to be played in the social and political development of the future by the local body, whether we call it commune, parish, or municipality. The fact that he has given it a fantastic name, and surrounded it with many fantastic conditions, should not hinder us from recognising his great sagacity and originality. The freedom of the individual and of the minority is, moreover, protected against the possible tyranny of the _phalange_ by the existence, under reasonable limits and under social control, of individual capital. This individual capital, further, is perfectly _mobile_; that is, the possessor of it, if he thinks fit to migrate or go on travel, may remove his capital, and find a welcome for his labour, talent, and investments in any part of the world. Such arrangements of Fourier may suggest a much-needed lesson to many of the contemporary adherents of ‘scientific socialism.’ While, therefore, we believe that Fourier’s system was as a whole entirely utopian, he has with great sagacity drawn the outlines of much of our political and social progress; and while we believe that the full development of human passions as recommended by him would soon reduce us to social chaos, a time may come in our ethical and rational growth when a widening freedom may be permitted and exercised, not by casting off moral law, but by the perfect assimilation of it. ----- [1] Fourier’s complete works (6 vols., Paris, 1840-46; new ed. 1870). The most eminent expounder of Fourierism was Victor Considérant, _Destinée sociale_; Gatti de Gammont’s _Fourier et son système_ is an excellent summary. CHAPTER III FRENCH SOCIALISM OF 1848