There are two things, M. Reybaud remarks, especially reprehensible in the theory of Fourier and of kindred socialists--First, the confounding happiness with enjoyment, and the legitimating of all our passions; and Secondly, the egregious expectation of moulding mankind by an external or social organization, without calling in aid the virtues of the individual. The one necessarily follows on the other. The chain of error is manifest, and leads, as a chain of error may be expected to do, to inextricable confusion. If mere enjoyment, if the gratification of our senses and passions, be the highest aim and condition of the human being, it follows that all moral discipline, all self-denial, must be regarded as so much defect, so much imperfection, so much manifest failure in the world-scheme. That lofty gratification which men have been accustomed to attribute to self-control, to abstinence practised under a sense of duty, or in the cause of justice, this is to be measured off as so much simple misery, or so much negation of enjoyment. Let all restraint be discarded: let man be free; but yet, as the good of the whole is to be consulted in all societies, and in the new society is consulted in an eminent degree, the individual thus released from all self-control must be ruled despotically, or, if you will, moulded, fashioned, mechanized by the laws of the community; for we suppose it will be admitted, whatever M. Fourier tells us of his discovered law of attraction, that a very stringent legislation must bind together that harmonic society, which begins by giving loose rein to all the passions of mankind. How the two are to be practically reconciled--how the utmost license of the individual is to be combined with the utmost and most minute supervision of the laws, we leave the socialist to determine. Such is the miserable tissue of error and confusion which these projects present to view. These socialists are fond of inventing new Christianities, and in some _salons_ in Paris it is, or was till very lately, the fashion to have a new Christianity propounded every full moon. New enough! They present at least a sufficient contrast with the old Christianity, and in no other point more than in this--the complete dependence for the formation of the character of individuals on the art of grouping and regimenting them. Christianity has supported for ages monastic institutions, institutions the most counter to the passions of men, solely by its strong appeal to the individual conscience. St Simonian institutions, or delightful _phalansteres_, will in vain flatter every passion and indulge every sense; if they leave the conscience inert, if nothing is built on the sense of duty, they will no sooner rise but they will crumble back again into dust.