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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