Among the Associationists, the most influential utopian is Charles François Marie Fourier. He was a prolific and incoherent writer, and his Utopia, if the truth be told, exists as disjecta membra rather than as a single work; but in his case I make an exception to the criterion of selection; because in every other respect he has a claim upon our attention. This Fourier was a dry little French commercial traveller, whose personal fortune was lost in the French revolution and whose hopes for founding a real eutopia were blasted by the July revolution of 1830. Again and again he transferred himself from one line of goods to another in order to increase the area of the territory he covered and learn more of the workings of society; and so in his writings a wealth of concrete detail goes hand in hand with personal crotchets and the opinionativeness which arises almost inevitably out of an undisciplined solitude. What follows is a distillation of Fourier’s thought, with the lees and orts left in the bottom of the flask. Fourier differs largely from the early utopians in that he is concerned first of all not with modifying human nature but with finding out what it actually is. His utopia is to be based upon an understanding of man’s actual physical and mental makeup, and its institutions are to be such as will permit man’s original nature to function freely. The motive which draws his community together is attraction; the power which sets his institutions going is “the passions.” Under the head of passions--the original biological equipment--Fourier gives a list of tendencies which corresponds roughly with the modern psychologist’s list of instincts. Fourier takes these passions as “given”; his utopia is not designed to “effect any change in our passions ... their direction will be changed without changing their nature.” As Brisbane says in his Introduction to Fourier’s philosophy, social institutions are to these passional forces what machinery is to material forces. A good community, according to Fourier, is one which will bring all these passions into play, in their complex actions and interactions. As in the Republic, the ideal behind Fourier’s utopia is harmony; for man has a threefold destiny; namely, “an industrial destiny, to harmonize the material world; a social destiny, to harmonize the passional or moral world; and an intellectual destiny, to discover the laws of universal order and harmony.” What was at fault with modern civilized societies was that they were incomplete, and in their functioning they created a social dissonance. To overcome this, says Fourier, men must unite into harmonious associations which will give play to all their activities, and which, by erecting common institutions, will do away with the waste arising in the individual’s attempts to do for himself all the things which would be done by a complete community.