Added to this indignity, outsiders appear to think that rations are served as in the army, and that it is an absolute necessity in order to fulfil some absurd law, that every man, woman and child should sit down together at the same exact time, and eat the aforesaid rations together; and also, there being some good and able men here, that they court connection with weak people of any complexion so as to make a fair average: and they feel that such conditions, to say the least, are unnatural; and so would I, if there was truth in the position, but there is not a particle. It oftentimes seems to me that people take a sort of pleasure in misrepresenting facts, or seem to have a satisfaction in thinking that they know about as much as the average person, and that it would be a sin to know a little more. They are pardoned for their ignorance because nearly, if not all, the social organizations that have departed from the common customs of society and have formed "communities" have striven for equality of property rights and society rights, and often for sameness in dress and religious ceremonies. This is the nut that all persons who look superficially at us and at the community system, find hard to crack. They feel that if a person has an ambition to be more than another, to desire more, to desire to wear a different garment and pray differently or worship differently, they should have the inherent right to do so. And this is the feeling that these common-sense people, these intelligent people of Brook Farm who organized this society, have and believe in, and they have tried to arrange all their laws and customs to conform to these evident truths. And also, they never would have adopted any of the formulas or ideas of Fourier, had they not believed his Industrial Phalanxes allowed all the variety of social conditions that make a true society or social order. No attempts ever undertaken had the sanction of Fourier, because they had not the proper number of persons to make a start with. "By no means," said Fourier, "attempt to organize a phalanx with less than four hundred persons; that is the very least number you can have and have a sufficient number of characters to produce anything like harmony." His idea was, that from fifteen to eighteen hundred persons would be the true number. The Brook Farmers have never preached social _equality_, but social _rights_. Social _equality_ is a thing that comes from individual ability, and is never positively fixed, but relative, because there are talents superior and inferior mingled in each human being, and the king may wonder how the cook put the apples in the dumplings. With the larger number of individuals stated, a greater chance is given to find "mates" and "chums," and the less likelihood there would be in the imperfectly organized societies of rude contact--for who could doubt that all such societies, even the very best, would be imperfect for generations to come?