“Les attractions sont proportionnelles aux destinées, La série distribue les harmonies.” Fourier wrote three works of importance. The first is the one already mentioned, “La Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinées Générales”—“The Theory of the Four Movements and the General Destinies”—published in 1808. The four movements were social, animal, organic, and material, giving us society, animal life, organic life, and the material world. The object is to show that one law, that of attraction, governs them all. Newton discovered the law of one movement, the material; Fourier, that this same law of attraction pervaded all four movements. This discovery prepared the way for the most astonishing and most fortunate event which could happen to this globe—viz., “the sudden passage from social chaos to universal harmony.”[67] This work was considered incomplete by Fourier himself, and the fantastic notions and ridiculous prophecies contained in it were the subject of so much ridicule and criticism that for a long time he would not mention the book, and was unwilling to hear others speak of it. When he was afterwards urged to republish it he refused, saying that it contained errors, and he should be obliged to rewrite it, to make it satisfactory to himself.[68] Fourier’s chief work was his “Traité de l’Association Domestique Agricole ou Attraction Industrielle”—“Treatise on Domestic Rural Association or Industrial Attraction”—published subsequently in his complete works under the title of “La Théorie de l’Unité Universelle”[69]—“The Theory of Universal Unity.” The first edition appeared in 1822. The fourteen years between the appearance of the “Théorie des Quatre Mouvements” and the “Traité de l’Association” were passed in meditation, in revolving and evolving plans in his mind. He worked out a complete philosophy in the “Traité.” His system not only included man and the earth, but the heavens above and the waters under the earth. His scientific notions were crude in the extreme. Nature was composed of eternal and indestructible principles—of God, active and moving principle; of matter, passive principle; and of justice or mathematics, the regulating principle of the universe, to which God himself was subject. One of the most curious features of Fourier’s system is the use he makes of figures. Pythagoras himself did not attach more importance to them. They revealed to him hitherto undisclosed secrets, so that he was able to give a precise answer to any conceivable question. They enabled him to prophesy. He foresaw that the existence of the human race on this earth was to continue until it completed a period of eighty thousand years. This period is divided into four phases, two of them ascending phases of vibration or gradation, and two descending phases of vibration or degradation. The following table gives the four phases: ASCENDING VIBRATION.[70] FIRST PHASE.