CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND DEVELOPMENT.
Two years of the experimental and "idyllic" life, ran rapidly away, and the Community had gained something of position and name in the outward world. Personal contact had modified the extreme views of many of the founders. Changes had taken place in the Individuals composing it; some had departed. Six of the original stockholders remained. The number had increased to about seventy, including some thirty who were pupils. The financial success had not been all that was desired. Everything else was getting more settled. The social life was charming. Improvements in material matters, in comforts, in discipline and in grace of manners were visible. But what was to be developed next among all the things desirable? Was it to push the school still further in progress, to attach mechanical industries to the organization, to work up the farm life into more prominence, or what?
It could not be expected that this large number of persons, whose early surroundings and ideas had been so varied, could at once agree as to what next steps were necessary to take, or to what definite end the Community should be shaped. There was need, certainly, of some central purpose strong enough for all to unite upon to inspire permanence.
Neither Mr. Ripley nor any of his co-workers had heard of Charles Fourier—the French exponent of industrial association—or his doctrines, unless in a most casual way, and certainly they had not studied them when they started the Community. They were independent workers in a field of social science; but when they became acquainted with his ideas, especially his ideas of industry made attractive by organized labor, and its relation to the higher standard of work and liberal belief they had adopted and maintained thus far, their enthusiasm was awakened for them and they resolved to graft some of his formulas on their institution. The little Community, with its bright, cheerful school and its happy members, was not paying its way. There were philosophers enough in it. There were plenty of sweet, charming characters and amateur workmen in it, but the hard-fisted toilers and the brave financiers were absent.
Still, it was not entirely absence of financial success that led the responsible men of the Community to make the change in the organization that they did, but truly because the grand and reasonable ideas of the distinguished Frenchman bore such internal evidences of harmony with human nature and with God's providence and laws that they carried conviction to the great and sympathetic minds of Brook Farm. Fourier argued that there was a sublime destiny for mankind on this earth, that the Creator was infinitely good, that all the instincts of our nature, when not subverted by bad conditions, pointed towards that destiny, and that humanity was on its way upward—that the past progress argued what the future might be.
I give as illustrations, a few extracts from "The Social Destiny of Man," by Albert Brisbane, page 269:—"Four societies have existed on the earth—the savage, patriarchal, barbarian and civilized. Under these general heads may be classed the various social forms through which man has progressed up to the present day. If four have existed may not a fifth, or even a sixth, be discovered and organized? Common sense would dictate that there could, although the world has entertained a different opinion."
Page 293: "If the barbarian asserts that the lash is the only means of forcing the slave to labor, the civilized is not far behind him in his reasoning, for he will assert with equal confidence that necessity and want are necessary stimulants to industry. The barbarian is as ignorant of the levers which civilization puts in play as is the civilized of the powerful incentives to action which the groups and series will call forth."
Page 464: "If He [God] has not known how or has not wished to give us a social code productive of justice, industrial attraction and passional harmony;—if he has not known how, how could he have supposed our weak reason would succeed in a task in which he himself doubted of success? If he has not wished, how can our legislators hope to organize a society which would lead to the results above mentioned, and of which he wished to deprive us. … What motive could he have had to refuse us such a code? Six views may be taken on the subject of this omission.
"First—either he has not known how to give us a social code guaranteeing truth, justice and industrial attraction; in this case why create in us the want of it, without having the means of satisfying that want which he satisfies in creatures inferior to us, to which he assigns a mode of existence adapted to their attractions and instincts:
"Second—or he has not wished to give us this code; which thus supposes the Creator to be the persecutor of mankind, creating in us wants which it is impossible to satisfy, inasmuch as none of our codes can extirpate our permanent scourges:
"Third—or he has known how and has not wished; in which case the Creator becomes a malignant being, knowing how to do good, but preferring the reign of evil:
"Fourth—or he has wished and has not known how; in this case he is incapable of governing us, knowing and wishing the good which he cannot realize, and which we still less can attain:
"Fifth—or he has neither wished nor known how; and we must attribute to him both want of genius and evil intention:
"Sixth—or he has known how and has wished; in this case the code exists, and he must have provided a mode for its revelation—for of what use would it be if it were to remain hidden from men for whom it is destined?"
Page 468: "If the human race were at the commencement of their social career—in the first ages of civilization—they would perhaps be excusable for founding some hope of social good upon human science, upon the legislation of man; but long experience has proved the impotency of human legislation, and shown clearly that the world has nothing to hope from human laws and civilized constitutions."
Page 260: "Either the passions are bad or the social mechanism is false, for evil prevails, and to a melancholy extent. If the former be true, then there is no hope of a better state of things, for every means of repression and constraint that human ingenuity could invent has been applied to regulate their action; but all in vain—they have remained unchanged, and in the eyes of the moralist as perverse as ever. If, however, the latter be true—that is, if the social mechanism be false—then there is a chance for a better future; for our incoherent and absurd societies are changing more or less with every century. They are at the mercy or whim of a tyrant, or of a revolution of the mass; they may therefore be reformed or done away with entirely."
These grand words and this powerful logic, if even too strong for some of the readers of this book, were not so for the brave hearts of the leaders of Brook Farm, and for Mr. Ripley in particular. The tentative feeling, the search for science to back up the social impulses, seemed at last to have found something solid in a society conceived by the Creator; the man created by him, fitted to it by him; the society fitted to the man; the one the counterpart of the other. Albert Brisbane, Parke Godwin and Horace Greeley, with the Tribune, were arousing the thinkers in New York; Gerritt Smith was agitating the land question and giving away to actual settlers vast tracts of land owned by him. The works of the communist Owen and others were read. Antislavery, anti-war and non-resistance societies were vigorously prosecuting their claims. It was an era of great social activity. Thousands were aroused. "Communities," "Associations" and "Phalanxes" were springing up in various quarters. It seemed that the tide of change from social chaos to order was fast rising. A great wave of reform was sweeping over the land. Should the Community moor itself where it was, or be borne on with the flood?
This was the question of moment; and while the young danced or played, acted in charade or masquerade, and the youths wove garlands of green around their straw hats, and amused themselves by wearing long tresses and tunics, the sedater heads were solving this important question. And they must decide it, but first of all Mr. Ripley's wishes must be consulted: the key to the situation was in his hands. What would he do? Would he, and should they, take among them men and women endowed only with practical, everyday talents, able to be honest and make shoes and sew garments; to strike with a sledge and a blacksmith's arm; to be adepts, maybe, in all