He treats man as a plastic thing, something that may be put up or
down, ripened or retarded, moulded, polished, made into solid, or
fluid, or gas, at the will of the leader; or, perhaps, as a
vegetable, from which, though now a poor crab, a very good peach can
by manure and exposure be in time produced, but skips the faculty of
life, which spawns and scorns system and system-makers, which eludes
all conditions, which makes or supplants a thousand phalanxes and
New-Harmonies with each pulsation. There is an order in which in a
sound mind the faculties always appear, and which, according to the
strength of the individual, they seek to realize in the surrounding
world. The value of Fourier's system is that it is a statement of
such an order externized, or carried outward into its correspondence
in facts. The mistake is, that this particular order and series is
to be imposed by force of preaching and votes on all men, and carried
into rigid execution. But what is true and good must not only be
begun by life, but must be conducted to its issues by life. Could
not the conceiver of this design have also believed that a similar
model lay in every mind, and that the method of each associate might
be trusted, as well as that of his particular Committee and General
Office, No.
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