South Boston, April 8th, 1847.
My Dear Sumner: — I have
read this volume of Fourier (Théorie de l’unité universelle, Vol. IV) with the greatest interest. Seldom if ever has a book excited in me such
strong feelings of pleasure and pain, admiration and disgust. It is the work of
a great mind, led astray by a false philosophy; the herculean effort of a blind
giant.
Fourier was a
wonderful man. He grasped the widest principles of nature and picked up the
smallest atoms. He starts with the great and only true doctrine, that every
passion was implanted by God for good purposes; that when duly and harmoniously
developed in one and in all men, then humanity will be a great family of
brethren, cooperating for each other's interests and thereby promoting each
other's pleasures. He justly condemns all the theories of repression. He points
out, in a masterly manner, the vices and errors and absurdities of what is
called civilization . . . Fourier overlooks this great truth, that the human
race was meant for progress, and that certain animal passions were given to
reign paramount during certain stages of that progress, and afterwards to be
starved and reduced into their proper weakness and subserviency to the ruling
passions. . . . He errs equally in his conception of the capacity of mankind
for the family affections. The sons and expectant heirs of rich parents can
reverence and love and really wish them to live, Fourier and France to the
contrary notwithstanding.
Among the morals to
be drawn from the book is the important one that the clearest heads and the
kindest hearts may be clouded and hardened by a life spent in an immoral and
vicious, though ever so refined a community.
Ever truly yours,
S. G. Howe.
SOURCE: Laura E.
Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe,
Volume 2, p. 255-6
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