Not only did Fourier thus wholly abstain from practical experiments himself and discourage those of others during his lifetime, but he condemned in advance all the experiments that have since been made in his name. He set the conditions of a legitimate experiment so high, that it has been thus far impossible to make a fair trial of Fourierism, and probably always will be. How Mr. Godwin could imagine him to be one of the theoretico-practicals, we do not understand. His system seems to us to have been as thoroughly separate from experiment, as it was possible for him to make it; and in that sense, as far removed from the modern standards of science, as the east is from the west. It can be defended only as a theory that came by inspiration or intuition, and therefore needs no experiment. Considered simply as the result of human lucubrations, it belongs with the _a priori_ theories of the ancient world, of which Youmans says: "The old philosophers, disdaining nature, retired into the ideal world of pure meditation, and holding that the mind is the measure of the universe, they believed they could reason out all truths from the depths of the soul." Owen, Mr. Godwin's third example, was really a theoretico-practical man; i.e. he attempted to carry his theories into practice--with what success we have seen. Instead of classing St. Simon and Fourier with him, we should name Ballou and Cabet as his proper compeers. Another error of Mr. Godwin is, in representing Plato as merely theoretical; meaning that the Republic, like the Utopia and Oceana, was "sketched as an exercise of the imagination or reason, rather than as a plan for actual experiment." It is recorded of Plato in the American Cyclopaedia, that "he made a journey to Syracuse in the vain hope of realizing, through the new-crowned younger Dionysius, his ideal Republic." Thus, though he never made an actual experiment, he wished and intended to do so; which is quite as much as St. Simon and Fourier ever did. Mr. Godwin seems also to underrate the Practical Architects: i.e. those that we have called the successful Communities. It is hardly fair to represent them as merely practical. The Shakers certainly have a theory which is printed in a book; and there is no reason to doubt that such thinkers as Rapp, and Bimeler of the Zoarites, and the German nobleman that led the Ebenezers, had socialistic ideas which they either worked by or worked out in their practical operations, and which would compare favorably at least with the sentimentalisms of the first French school. If St. Simon and Owen and Fourier are to be called the theoretico-practicals, such workers as Ann Lee, Elder Meacham, Rapp, and Bimeler ought at least to be called the practico-theoreticals.