III. The passages quoted in the last paragraph are of great importance; for they did more than any others to abolish slavery. Its defenders appealed to the Bible as confidently as to the national Constitution; but the Garrisonians declared with Emerson, that "The highest virtue is always against the law." They were confident that they knew the truth as soon as they saw it, and had no need to answer objections. The same faith in spontaneous impressions inspired the suffragists, of whom the next chapter will give some account. Agitations against established institutions sprang up thickly under the first step of Transcendentalism. Church, State, family ties, and business relations seemed all likely to be broken up. Lowell says that "Everybody had a mission (with a capital M) to attend to everybody else's business."... "Conventions were held for every hitherto inconceivable purpose." "Communities were established where everything was to be in common but common sense." The popular authors about 1840 were mostly Transcendentalists; and nearly every Transcendentalist was a Socialist. Some forty communities were started almost simultaneously; but not one-half lasted through the second year. One of the first failures was led by a man who had been working actively against slavery, but who had come to think that the only way to attack it was to try to do away with all private property whatever. Brook Farm lasted half a dozen years, with a success due partly to the high culture of the inmates, and partly to some recognition of the right of private ownership. The general experience, however, was that a Transcendentalist was much more willing to make plans for other people, than to conform in his own daily life to regulations proposed by anyone else. The very multiplicity of the reforms, started in the light of the new philosophy, did much to prevent most of them from attaining success. We have seen how slavery was abolished; but no one should regret the failure of most of the Transcendentalist schemes. The subsidence of Socialism was especially fortunate on account of the frankness with which matrimony was repudiated by the system most in vogue, that of Fourier. He had followed the spontaneous and instinctive impulses of man with the utmost consistency. Other Socialists have been more cautious; but the problem of reconciling family ties with communal life has not been solved. Some of the English Transcendentalists published a pamphlet recommending systematic encouragement of licentiousness; and an American philosopher, who turned Roman Catholic in 1844, declared that free love was "Transcendentalism in full bloom." The term "higher law" was used to support the pretence of some obligation more binding than marriage. A free-love convention was held in New York about 1857; and very lax ideas had been already announced by active apostles of spontaneity known as Spiritualists.