If the disciples of my compatriot, Charles Fourier, do not express themselves exactly in this wise, all that have written bears the imprint of these thoughts. Are Fourier and his disciples right in believing that the law of passional attraction _alone_ is required to organize the industrial, moral and social world? That the primordial element of a system of society should be the Societary or Phalansterian association? That the most opposite, the most diverse passions are the conditions _sine quâ non_ of harmony? That the compensation of labor and of competition should be regulated according to Labor, Capital and Talent? We are not called on to examine this here. The only thing that need occupy us in this rapid review of contemporaneous opinions is the investigation of the sentiments and ideas of Fourier and his school in that which concerns the principal object of this book. A few pages from the chief of the order, and a summary analysis will suffice for this. In the _Théorie des quatre Mouvements_, M. Fourier writes; "That the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome should have disdained the interests of women is by no means surprising, since these rhetoricians were all ultra partisans of the pederasty which they had brought in high honor in _la belle antiquité_. They cast ridicule upon the associating with women; this passion was considered dishonorable.... These manners obtained the unanimous suffrage of the philosophers who, from the virtuous Socrates to the delicate Anacreon, affected Sodomitish love alone and contempt for women, who were banished to the upper apartments, immured as in a seraglio, and exiled from the society of men. "These fantastic tastes not having found favor among the moderns, there is reason for surprise that our philosophers should have inherited the hatred that the ancient scholars bore to women, and that they should continue to disparage the sex on account of a few wiles to which woman is forced by the oppression which weighs upon her; for every word or thought in conformity with the voice of nature is made in her a crime.