CHAPTER VI.MODERN COMMUNISTS.
The Communists hold as the principle of social organization, notthe agrarian law, as has been charged on them through ignorance or bad faith, but the enjoymentin commonof the soil, of implements of labor, and of products.From each one according to his strength, to each one according to his needs, is the formula of most among them.
It is not our business to examine the social value of this doctrine, but only to show what Communism thinks of woman and her rights.
The modern communists may be divided into two classes: the religious and the political.
Among the first are the Saint Simonians, the Fusionists and the Philadelphians.
Among the second, are the Equalitarians, the Unitarians, the Icarians, etc.
The first consider woman as the equal of man. To the others, she is free; among some, with a shade of subordination.
The Unitarians, who have drawn largely from Fourier, proclaim woman free, and equal with man.
We shall speak here of only a few of the communisticsects, reserving for separate articles what relates to the Saint Simonians and the Fusionists.
The Philadelphians, admitting God and the immortality of the soul, lay down these two principles: God is the chief of the social order; Fraternity is the law that governs human relations.
Religion, to the Philadelphians, is the practice of Fraternity; Progress is a dogma, Community is the law of the individual before God and conscience.
Touching the relations of the sexes and the rights of woman, M. Pecqueur thus expresses himself in his workLa République de Dieu, pp. 194, 195:
"Complete equality of the man and the woman."
The Monogamic marriage, intentionally indissoluble as a normal condition; such is the second practical consequence of the dogma of religious fraternity.
1.EQUALITY.
"We bring no proofs in evidence of this;his reason is blotted out by prejudice and his heart chilled by egotism, who is not impressed at once with the truth of equality.
"In the state of society created by the religion of fraternity and equality, women will find, from their earliest years,the same means and the same conditions of development of function and of remuneration, in short,THE SAME RIGHTS, the same social aim to pursue as men; and in proportion as custom shall correspond with the religious and moral ends of the union, will the living law deduce the practical consequences of all order, contained in the germ in the dogma of the complete equality of the sexes.
"4.MONOGAMY AND INDISSOLUBILITY.
"To comprehend the lawfulness of the unlimited or indefinite monogamic marriage, it suffices to consider: 1st. the exigencies of our inmost nature, that is, the characteristics of love; its instinctive aspiration to the union and the fusion of two beings, to duration and to perpetuity; the necessity of possessing each other reciprocally and of having faith in this possessionin order to love each other; in short, instinct, desire; the irresistible and universal affections, and the joys of paternity and of the family; 2d. the physiological conditions of generation, which exact monogamy in order to assure the reproduction and the good and progressive conservation of the species; 3d. social and religious exigencies, which require relations of all kinds to be predetermined and regulated, that each one may be secure in his expectation and his possession, and that there may be a possibility of satisfying the fundamental propensities of our natures.... To claim to introduce polygamy, promiscuousness, or union for a term of years into such surroundings, (the Philadelphian society,) is evidently to decree selfishness and mere carnal pleasure, while proclaiming duty and dignity. It is inconceivable that two moral beings, once united by pure love, should ever cease to love each other, to delight in each other, or at least to endure each other, when they are presumed already to be devoted and sacrificing without distinction in their love to their brothers and sisters.
"Still less is it conceivable that their brothers and sisters would dream of diverting this reciprocal love of two members of the family to their personal advantage;for this would be infamy."
M. Pecqueur admits, notwithstanding, that in very rare cases, divorce may be granted on account of incompatibility of temper. In such case the offending party would be excluded from the republic, and the other would be at liberty to remarry.
According to M. Pecqueur, indissolubility of marriage does not relate to the present antagonistic state of society, as he says:
"Divorce is a great misfortune, not only to the parties concerned, but to religion; notwithstanding, in the kingdom of Cæsar in which pure justice is the question, it is the lesser evil, when the individuals are determined on a separation in fact, and are lusting after other ties. They do evil clandestinely; they are the cause or the occasion of the temptation or the fall of others. Do what they will, the scandal is known; so that neither society, nor the spouses, nor the children, nor morality derive benefit from the consecration of absolute perpetuity.
"It is not charitable, it isimpiousto force two beings to remain together, one of which, to say the least, maltreats, detests, takes advantage of, or domineers over the other. It is equally wrong to grant them a separation from bed and board without at the same time permitting them to yield to chaste affections when they acknowledge these in purity and liberty."
So then, to the Philadelphians, expounded by M. Pecqueur, marriage is monogamous, indissoluble by intention; divorce is a sad necessity of the existing state of society, whilst separation is immorality. In short, woman isfree and the equal of man.
Another communist sect, that of the Icarians, takes no notice either of the nature or the rights of women.Its chief, M. Cabet, an ex-attorney-general, was too fully imbued with the doctrines of the Civil Code, that inelegant paraphrase of the Apostle Paul, not to be persuaded that woman ought to remain outside the pale of political right, and that she ought to be subordinate to man in general, and to her husband, good or bad, in particular.
Let us do justice however to M. Cabet's disciples; I have never found a single one of them of his opinion on this great question.
One evening in 1848, as M. Cabet was presiding over a well attended club, he was requested by a woman to put the question:Is woman the equal of man before social and political rights?Almost every hand was raised in the affirmative; in the negative, not a hand was raised, not a man protested against the affirmation. A round of applause followed from the galleries filled with women; and M. Cabet was somewhat disconcerted by the result. He seemed to be ignorant that the people, always eminently logical, are never guilty of quibbling to elude or to limit the principles that they have adopted.
This vote of the Cabet club was repeated in three others, in my presence. The men in paletots laughed at the demands of brave Jeanne Deroin; the men in blouses did not even smile at them.
M. Dezamy representing another shade of communism, thus expresses himself in the code of the Community; "Away with marital dominion! Freedom of alliance!perfect equality of both sexes!Freedom of divorce!"
He adds, under the heading; Laws for the union of the sexes, designed to prevent all discord and debauchery, page 266:
"Art. I. Mutual love, inmost sympathy, purity of heart between two beings, form and legalize their union.
"Art. II.There should be perfect equality between the two sexes.
"Art. III. No bond except that of mutual love can link the man and the woman together.
"Art. IV. Nothing shall prevent lovers who have separated from forming new ties as often as they shall be attracted to another person."
The ethics of M. Dezamy are not to our taste; we prefer those of the Communist, Pecqueur; but we are glad to prove that modern communism, divided on the questions of marriage, the family, and morals in relations of the sexes, is unanimous with respect to the liberty of woman and the equality of the sexes before the law and society.
In this, modern communism is greatly superior to that of the ancient school, practised among several nations, and taught by Plato, Morelly, etc. We recognize a sign of the times in this juster appreciation of woman, with the introduction of the principle of her rights into doctrines which formerly never took them into account.
The greater part of the Communists belong to the working class; which proves that the people most of all feel the great truth,that the liberty of woman is identical with that of the masses; and it will take more than MM. Proudhon, Comte, Michelet and their adepts, to throw cold water on their feelings and to make them retrace their steps.
SAINT SIMONIANS.
My mother, a zealous Protestant and very austere in morals, disapproved of St. Simonianism, and never permittedany one to speak of it in my presence except to condemn it; she took great care that not a line of the new doctrine should fall under my eyes.
Whether from a natural spirit of opposition or from instinctive justice, I know not, but I by no means shared in the censure that I heard expressed about me; one thing alone resulted from it—curiosity to become acquainted with what were called immoral dogmas.
I was in this frame of mind when one day while with my mother in the neighborhood of thePalais du Justice, I saw a company of men advancing, clad in a graceful costume; they were the Saint Simonians going in a body to defend their infant church against prosecution at the bar. I was greatly moved by the sight; I felt in communion with these youth who were about to bear testimony to their faith; they did not seem like strangers, but as struggling for my own cause or for one that deserved my sympathy, and tears sprang to my eyes. I could have heartily embraced those whom I heard defending them, and as heartily have assailed those who claimed that it would be just to condemn them. My mother being too generous to join with the latter, we departed in silence. I knew, without having any knowledge of the details, that the church of St. Simon had been dispersed.
It was not until some years after that, having made the acquaintance of a St. Simonian lady, I was enabled to read the doctrinal writings and to form an idea of the aspirations and the dogmas of the school of St. Simon. If the nature of this work forbids me their analysis, it cannot reproach me for expressing my sympathies for those who have had great and generous aspirations; for those who, in a critical point of view,have rendered real services to the cause of Progress; for those who have brought to light the solution of the two capital problems of our epoch;the emancipation of woman and of the workman. The St. Simonians have been enough assailed, enough calumniated to justify a woman who is not a St. Simonian in considering it a duty to render them justice, by acknowledging the good which they have done.
Yes, you have a right to be proud of your name of St. Simonians, you who have proclaimed the obligation of laboring without respite for the physical, moral and intellectual amelioration of the most numerous and the poorest class;
You who have proclaimed thesanctityof science, art, manufactures, and labor in every form;
You who have proclaimed the equality of the sexes in the family, the church, and the state;
You who have preached of peace and fraternity to a world given over to wars of cannon and competition.
You who have criticised the ancient dogma, and all the evil institutions that have thence arisen;
Yes, I repeat, you have deserved well of Progress, you have deserved well of Humanity; and you have a right to bear with pride your great scholastic name; for it was noble to desire the emancipation of woman, of labor, and of the laborer; it was generous to consecrate youth and fortune to it, as so many among you have done.
Through your aspirations, you have been the continuers of '89, since you dreamed of realizing what was contained in the germ in the Declaration of Rights: these are your titles of greatness; this is why your name will not perish. But if, through your sentiments,you belonged to the great era of '89, the social form in which you claimed to incarnate your principles, belonged to the Middle Ages; the age therefore has done right to leave you behind. Seduced by trinitarian mysticism, deluded by an erroneous historical point of view, you claimed to resuscitate hierarchy and theocracy in a system of humanity fashioned in conformity with the opposing principle; the triumph of individual liberty in social equality. This is the reason that the age could not follow you. No more could women follow you, for they felt that they could only be affranchised through labor and through purity of morals; by ruling over, not imitating masculine passions. They felt that their power of moralization was due as much to their chastity as to their intellect; they knew that those who make use of the most liberty in love, neither love nor esteem the other sex; that, in general, they employ their ascendancy over it to pervert it to ruin and afflict their companions, and to dissolve the family and civilization; that, in consequence, they are the most dangerous enemies of the emancipation of their sex; for man, sobered of his passion, can never desire to emancipate those by whom he has been deceived, ruined and demoralized.
The St. Simonian orthodoxy is therefore, in my opinion, greatly mistaken with respect to the ways and means of realization. Shall we impute this to it as a crime? No, indeed! social problems are not mathematical problems; there is merit in propounding them; courage and devotion in pursuing their solution, even when we fail completely to attain it.
We all know the spirit of the St. Simonians who first brought before the public mind of the age the question of female emancipation; it would be ungrateful inthe women who demand liberty and equality not to recognize the debt of gratitude which they have contracted toward them. It is their duty to say to their companions: the seal of St. Simonianism is the safeguard of the liberty of woman; wherever therefore you meet a St. Simonian, you may press his hand fraternally; you have in him a defender of your right.
Let us sketch the general outline of the St. Simonian doctrine, touching woman and her rights.
All of the St. Simonians admit that the sexes are equal;
That the couple forms the social individual;
That marriage is the sacred bond of generations; the association of a man and a woman for the accomplishment of a sacerdotal, scientific, artistic, or industrial work;
All admit divorce, and transition to another union; but some are more severe than others with respect to the conditions of divorce.
There is a division among them on the question of morals. Olinde Rodrigues and Bazard do not admit anyliaisonof love outside of marriage. M. Enfantine, on the contrary, claims the greatest liberty in love.
We should add that he gives to this opinion a fixed and provisional value only, since he says that the law of the relations of sexes can only be established in a sure and definitive manner by the concurrence of the woman; and since, on the other hand, he prescribes continence to his closest followers, until the coming of the Woman, of which he regards himself the precursor.
In addition, to give our readers a more precise idea of the sentiments of the St. Simonians concerning woman, we will cite some passages of their writings.
"The use of woman by man still exists," says M. Enfantin; "this it is that constitutes the necessity of our apostleship. This use, this subalternationcontrary to nature, with respect to the future, results on the one hand, in falsehood and fraud; on the other, in violence and animal passions; it is necessary to put an end to these vices."—(Religion St. Simonienne, 1832, p. 5.)
"Woman, as we have said,is the equal of man; She is now a slave; it belongs to her master to affranchise her." (Id.p. 12.)
"There will be no definitive law and morality until woman shall have spoken." (Id.p. 18.)
"In the name of God," exclaims M. Enfantin in hisAppel à la Femme, "in the name of God and of all the sufferings which Humanity, his loved child, endures to-day in her flesh; in the name of the poorest and most numerous class whose daughters are sold to Indolence and whose sons are given up to War; in the name of all those men and of all those women, who cast the glittering veil of falsehood or the filthy rays of debauchery over their secret or public prostitution; in the name of St. Simon who came to announce to man and womantheir moral, social and religious equality, I conjure woman to answer me!" (Entretien du 7 Décembre, 1831.)
On his side, Bazard concludes a pamphlet, published in January, 1832, with these words:
"And we too have hastened the coming of woman; we too summon her with all our might; but it is in the name of the pure love with which she has imbued the heart of man, and which man is now ready to give her in return; it is in the name of the dignity which is promised her in marriage; it is lastly and above all, inthe name of the most numerous and poorest class,whose servitudes and humiliations she has hitherto shared, and whom her enchanting voice can alone to-day have power finally to release from the harsh imposition with which it is still weighed down by the wrecks of the past."
Ah! you are to a great extent right, Enfantin and Bazard! So long as woman is not free and the equal of man; so long as she is not everywhere at his side, sorrows, disorders, war, the exploitation of the weak, will be the sad lot of humanity.
Pierre Leroux, the gentlest, best and most simple man that I know, writes in turn in the fourth volume of hisEncyclopédie Nouvelle, articleEgalité, the following remarkable paragraphs:
"There are not two different beings, man and woman, there is but a single human being with two phases, which correspond and are united by love.
"Man and woman exist to form the couple; they are the two parts of it.Outside of the couple, outside of love and marriage, there is no longer any sex; there are human beings of a common origin and of like faculties. Man at every moment of his life is sensation, sentiment, knowledge; so is woman. The definition is therefore the same."
After having proved, according to his idea, that the type of woman differs from that of man, he continues:
"But this type does not separate them from the rest of humanity, and does not make of them a separate race which must be distinguished philosophically from man.... Love being absent, they manifest themselves to man as human beings, and are ranked, like man, under the various categories of civil society."
After having observed that, however different men may be, they are therefore none the less equal, since they all are sensation, sentiment and knowledge, Pierre Leroux, applying this principle to the question of the right of woman, adds:
"From whatever side we look at this question, we are led to proclaim the equality of man and woman. For, if we consider woman in the couple, woman is the equal of man, since the couple itself is founded on equality, since love is equality in itself, and since where justice, that is, equality, does not reign, there love cannot reign, but the contrary of love.
"And if we consider woman outside of the couple, she is a being like unto man, endowed with the same faculties in various degrees; one of those varieties in unity which constitute the world and human society."
The author says that woman should lay claim to equality only as a spouse and a human being; that to acknowledge her as free because she has sex, is to declare her at liberty not only to use but also to abuse love; and that the abuse of love must not be the appanage and sign of liberty.
He says that woman has sex only for him whom she loves and by whom she is loved; that to all others she can be merely a human being.
"From this point of view," continues he, "we must say to women: you have a right to equality by two distinct titles; as human beings and as wives. As wives, you are our equals, for love in itself is equality. As human beings, your cause is that of all,it is the same as that of the people; it is allied to the great revolutionary cause; that is, to the general progress of the human kind.You are our equals, not because you are women but because there are no longer either slaves or serfs.
"This is the truth that must be spoken to men and women; but it would be to pervert this truth and to transform it into error to say to women: You are a sex apart, a sex in the possession of love. Emancipate yourselves; that is, use and abuse love. Woman thus transformed into an unchaste Venus, loses at once her dignity as a human being and as a woman; that is, as a being capable of forming a human couple under the sacred law of love."
The excellent Leroux asks who does not feel, who does not admit at the present day the equality of the sexes?
Who would dare maintain that woman is an inferior being, of whom man is the guide and beacon light?
That woman is elevated by man, who is elevated only by himself and by God?
Who would dare maintain such absurdities to-day, brave and upright Leroux? P. J. Proudhon, the man who called youTheopompeandPâlissier—M. Michelet, who claims that woman was created to be the most tiresome doll of her loving husband.
But to return to yourself.
You affirm that God is androgynous; that in him coexist the male and female principles on the footing of equality: that consequently, man and woman are equal in God. I assent to this willingly, although I know absolutely nothing about it. But when you add that woman is deserving of quite as much as man, because she has shared in all the agonizing crises of the progressive education of the human race;
That love, which cannot exist without the woman, has led us from the law of slavery to that of equality;
That consequently woman represents half in the work of the ages;
In this there is no mystery; I join you therefore with all my heart in repeating to men the invitations and the lessons which you give to these ungrateful and stubborn males:
"If we are free, it is in part by woman; let her then be made free by us.
"But is she so? Is she treated by us as an equal?
"A wife—does she find equality in love and marriage?
"A human being, does she find equality in the State?
"This is the question.
"On the subject of woman, our civil law is a model of absurd contradictions. According to the Roman law, woman lived perpetually under tutelage; in this system of legislation, everything was at least in perfect harmony; woman was always a minor. We, on our part, declare her in a multitude of cases to be free as man. She is no longer under general or fictitious tutelage; her age of majority is fixed; she is competent to inherit in her own right; she inherits in equal proportion; she controls and disposes of her property; more than this, in the system of communion of goods between husband and wife, we admit the separation of property. But let the marriage bond itself be in question, in which wealth is no longer at stake, but ourselves and our mothers, ourselves and our sisters, ourselves and our daughters; then we are found intractable in our laws; we no longer admit equality; we require woman to declare herself our inferior and servant, and to swear obedience to us.
"Truly we cling more to money than to love; we have more consideration for money-bags than for human dignity; for we emancipate women as soon as they become freeholders; but as soon as they become wivesthe law declares them our inferiors. Here notwithstanding, that bond is in question in which the equality of man and woman is most evident; that bond in which this equality breaks forth, as it were; that bond in which it is so necessary to proclaim that without equality, the bond itself exists no longer. Yet, by an absurd contradiction, our civil law chooses this moment to proclaim the inferiority of woman; it condemns her to obedience, makes her take a false oath, and takes advantage of love to make it outrage itself.
"I have no doubt that, to future ages, the characteristic symbol of our moral condition will be that article of our laws which sanctions in set terms inequality in love. It will be said of us: they had so little comprehension of justice, that they did not comprehend love which is justice in even its holiest type; they had so little comprehension of love, that they did not even admit justice in it; and that in their written law, their Code, the form of marriage, the only sacrament of which they yet had any idea, instead of sanctioning equality, sanctions inequality; instead of union, disunion; instead of the love that equalizes and identifies its objects, some contradictory and monstrous relation, founded at the same time upon identity, and upon inferiority and slavery. Yes, like those forms of the law of the Twelve Tables, that we quote now to prove the barbarity of the ancient Romans and their ignorance of justice, this article of our Code will be some day cited to characterize our grossness and ignorance, for the absence of an elevated notion of justice is as marked in it as is the absence of an elevated notion of love.
"Thence follows everything relative to the condition of woman; or rather, everything is connected with thispoint; for will we respect the equality of woman as a human being when we are senseless enough to deny her this quality as a wife? Is woman to-day, in so far as a human being, really treated as the equal of man? I will not enter upon this broad subject. I confine myself to a single question; what education do women receive? You treat them as you treat the people. To these too you leave the old religion that fits us no longer. They are children kept as long as possible in swaddling clothes, as though this were not the true way to deform them, to destroy at once the rectitude of their mind and the candor of their soul. Besides, what does Society do for them? To what new careers does she give them access? Yet, notwithstanding, it is evident to every thinking mind that our arts, our sciences, our manufactures will make as much new progress when women are called to take a part in them, as they did a few years ago, when they were opened to the serfs. You complain of the want and wretchedness that weighs down your systems of society;abolish the castes that are still subsisting; abolish the caste in which you hold immured the half of the human race."
These few pages, my readers, give you the compass of the sentiments of the St. Simonians, both orthodox and dissenters, and justify the sympathy entertained by women who have attainedmajorityfor those who have so ardently pleaded their cause.
FUSIONISTS.
Louis de Tourreil, the revealer of Fusionism, is a man whom it is impossible to behold without sympathy or to hear without pleasure; he is kindly, he speakswell, and his ideas are most logically deduced; his principles once admitted, one is constrained to follow him to the end.
Tourreil expresses himself in theRevue Philosophiqueof May, 1856, on the subject of woman and her rights, as follows:
"Nature is reduced to three great co-eternal principles or productive agents of all things. These principles are:
"The female or passive principle,
"The male or active principle,
"And the mixed or unificative principle, participating in both, which is called Love.
"God is therefore Female, Male and Androgynous, in his trinary unity.
"He is simultaneously from all eternity Mother, Father and Love, instead of being, as the theologians say, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three agents of like sex, incapable of producing anything.
"You will easily conceive, my dear brother, that if the masculine and the feminine sex hold the same rank in the Divine Trinity, they will be also found in the same rank in humanity. The part which the divine woman plays in Heaven, the human woman will play on Earth....
"Were he (God) only of the masculine sex, men would say that the masculine sex alone is noble, and that woman is created merely for the service of man, as man is created for that of God. They would even question whether she had a soul, and would think that they were doing her a favor in admitting her as something in life."
After quoting the teachings of the apostle Paul with respect to woman and marriage, the author continues:
"Behold, my dear brother, the part which Christianity assigns to woman. If this doctrine therefore were followed in every point, and if it ought to be replaced by no higher one, woman would find herself condemned in perpetuity to a subalternization humiliating to her nature.
"But Fusionism, which is the doctrine of Salvation for all, does not permit any one to be sacrificed; for this reason, woman is the equal of man and man the equal of woman, as in God, the eternal Mother is the equal of the eternal Father, and the eternal Father is the equal of the eternal Mother."
De Tourreil believes that the Mother gives form and the Father life, two things equally necessary to constitute the being.
"Since woman is the equal of man in absolute principle," continues he, "and since she is co-eternal with him, there is injustice in subordinating her to man in the relative; and the book ofGenesiscommits a gross error in making her proceed from man:
"If either of the two could be before the other, it would be the woman, for strictly speaking, we could conceive of the being without the life, but it would be quite impossible to conceive of the life without the being: The being without the life would be a dead being, but what would the life be without the being? It would be a life without existence, negation, the absence of life, nothingness. Therefore, in logical order, woman is first....
"Not only ought woman to be the equal of man, as we have seen, but in enunciation and classification, she should be named and classed first.
"Woman is the mould by which the species is perfectedor depraved, according as the mould is good or bad. The fate of humanity depends therefore on woman, since she has all powerful influence on the fruit that she bears in her bosom.
"Pure, good, intelligent, she will produce healthy, intelligent and good beings.
"Impure, narrow, and wicked, she will produce unhealthy, unintelligent and wicked beings.
"In a word, the child will be what its mother is, for nothing can give what it has not.
"It is important therefore that woman should be developed like man, that her education should be comprehensive, that her person should be honored, respected, and tenderly cared for, in order that nothing in the social surroundings may shape it to evil.
"Destined by the Supreme Being to form the human being from her flesh, her blood and her soul, destined to nourish it with her milk and to give it its earliest education, the two acts which have the greatest influence over the individual life, woman should be considered as the chief agent of perfection. Thisrôleclasses her naturally in a very elevated rank in society, and exacts of her superior perfections.
"Thus in the future she will be the image of Divine Wisdom on earth, as man will represent Divine Power.
"To man more especially will belong action; to woman, counsel.
"Man will take the initiative in difficult enterprises; woman will moderate or excite ardor therein.
"Man will rule the planet; woman will embellish it.
"Man will symbolize science and manufactures; woman will symbolize poetry and art.
"The one will always have need of the other; theywill walk together side by side, and will find completeness reciprocally in each other.
"Such, my dear friend, after a brief fashion, is the idea which should be formed of woman. Man and woman are not two beings radically separated; both together make but a single being. To subordinate woman to man or man to woman is therefore to mutilate the human being, or to fail to comprehend its interests. That humanity may be happy, neither of its halves must suffer. And how can it help suffering if it is reduced to servitude and oppressed by the other?
"Our destiny on earth is to constitute the collective being in his own consciousness. For this, it is necessary to realize the humanitary androgynus. Now the humanitary androgynus necessitates first the individual androgynus which can only be constituted by harmonious marriage.
"Marriage is therefore the great formative or deformative law of the collective being, according as it is expressed by the legislator in a manner conformably or contrary to human destiny.
"It is in marriage that the sources of good and evil are found; would you know why?
"Because in the act that joins the man to the woman, and by which the couple are made to form but one body, the two souls are fused by means of a reciprocal donation, which unites the souls of the two for eternity.
"So that, after the conjunction, the soul of the woman adheres to the soul of the man and accompanies it everywhere, while the soul of the man adheres to the woman and never more quits it.
"Whence it follows that if the soul of the man be depraved, it depraves the woman to whom it is united, by exercising over her a continued action, even at a distance.So also does the depravity of the woman united to the man deprave him without his knowing it by an occult and permanent action.
"The souls of two depraved beings may be therefore inseparably conjoined, without thus constituting the individual androgynus, which is the divine end of marriage or the union of the sexes.
"The individual androgynus is only possible to the condition of unity. But unity cannot be constituted by evil.
"The good, the true and the perfect alone can combine the conditions of unity. The evil, the false and the imperfect are essentially inharmonious in their nature.
"Two wicked, insincere and vicious beings will only produce by their conjunction a still greater difference. They will be united, but only reciprocally to torment each other. Unity will never be constituted by them; and without the constitution of unity or the individual androgynus, it will be impossible to realize the human destiny.
"In order that the individual androgynus may exist in the couple, there must be perfect spiritual communion between them; that is, communion of thought, of feeling, and of will. But how can two individuals who, instead of being ruled by truth, are ruled only by their misdirected passions,—how can these two make but one? It is impossible.
"You will comprehend, my dear brother, from these few words, how sacred is marriage, and how important it is to contract none but harmonious unions, for the unhappiness of a lifetime often depends on an inconsiderate conjunction."
Having had several opportunities of meeting M. deTourreil, I asked him for some exact details in respect to the liberty of woman and marriage.
The following is an abstract of those that he has kindly given me;
Education should be the same for both sexes;
Woman should be at liberty to follow the vocation which comes to her from God; and of which she alone is judge;
"In all grades and employments in the republic of God, woman should be at the side of man;
After the age of fifty, all individuals of both sexes should be rulers and priests;
The reproduction of the species being the work of the love of persons healthy in mind and in body, before marriage, the bride should be required to make confession to a priestess and the bridegroom to a priest, in order to be enlightened with respect to the opportuneness or unsuitableness of the union.
Dissolution of marriage should take place but in a single case,—when the husband and wife have attained to complete fusion; that is, to feeling and knowing reciprocally that they have no longer anything to exchange. It then becomes necessary to form new ties, and, each one to labor to fuse with a new consort. In the existing condition of humanity, this fusion cannot take place; but in the future, when we shall be nearer perfection, it will become possible several times in life.
Fusionism is, as is evident, mystical socialism.
Its votaries are gentle and good, and very tolerant towards those who do not think like them.
PHALANSTERIANS.
The motto of the Fourieristic, Societary or Phalansterianschool isrespect for individual liberty, based on the following notions:
All nature is good; it becomes perverted only when performing its functions in evil surroundings.
No person exactly resembling the rest, each one should be the sole judge of his capacities, and should receive laws only from himself.
Attractions are proportional to destinies.
If the disciples of my compatriot, Charles Fourier, do not express themselves exactly in this wise, all that have written bears the imprint of these thoughts.
Are Fourier and his disciples right in believing that the law of passional attractionaloneis required to organize the industrial, moral and social world?
That the primordial element of a system of society should be the Societary or Phalansterian association?
That the most opposite, the most diverse passions are the conditionssine quâ nonof harmony?
That the compensation of labor and of competition should be regulated according to Labor, Capital and Talent?
We are not called on to examine this here.
The only thing that need occupy us in this rapid review of contemporaneous opinions is the investigation of the sentiments and ideas of Fourier and his school in that which concerns the principal object of this book. A few pages from the chief of the order, and a summary analysis will suffice for this.
In theThéorie des quatre Mouvements, M. Fourier writes;
"That the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome should have disdained the interests of women is by no means surprising, since these rhetoricians were all ultrapartisans of the pederasty which they had brought in high honor inla belle antiquité. They cast ridicule upon the associating with women; this passion was considered dishonorable.... These manners obtained the unanimous suffrage of the philosophers who, from the virtuous Socrates to the delicate Anacreon, affected Sodomitish love alone and contempt for women, who were banished to the upper apartments, immured as in a seraglio, and exiled from the society of men.
"These fantastic tastes not having found favor among the moderns, there is reason for surprise that our philosophers should have inherited the hatred that the ancient scholars bore to women, and that they should continue to disparage the sex on account of a few wiles to which woman is forced by the oppression which weighs upon her; for every word or thought in conformity with the voice of nature is made in her a crime.
"What can be more inconsistent than the opinion of Diderot, who pretends that, to write to woman, one has only to dip his pen in the rainbow, and sprinkle the writing with dust from butterflies' wings? Women might reply to the philosopher: Your civilization persecutes us as soon as we obey nature; we are obliged to assume a fictitious character and to listen to impulses contrary to our desires. To give us a relish for this doctrine, you are forced to bring in play deceitful illusions and language, as you do with respect to the soldier whom you cradle in laurels and immortality to divert his thoughts from his wretched condition. If he were truly happy, he would welcome the plain and truthful language which you take care not to address to him. It is the same with women; if they were free and happy, they would be less eager for illusionsand cajoleries, and it would no longer be necessary in writing to them to place rainbows and butterflies' wings under contribution.
"When it (Philosophy) rails at the vices of women, it criticises itself; this it is that produces these vices by a social system which, repressing their faculties from their infancy and through the whole course of their life, forces them to have recourse to fraud in order to yield to nature.
"To attempt to judge of women by the vicious character which they display in civilization is like attempting to judge of human nature by the character of the Russian peasant, who is destitute of all ideas of honor and liberty; or like judging the beaver by the stupidity which they show when domesticated, whilst in a condition of liberty combined with labor, they become the most intelligent of all quadrupeds. The same contrast will reign between the women who are slaves of civilization and those who are free in the combined order; they will surpass men in industrial devotion, in loyalty, in nobleness; but outside of the free and combined state, woman, like the domesticated beaver or the Russian peasant, becomes a being so inferior to her destiny and talents that we are inclined to despise her when judging her superficially according to appearances.
"It is a surprising thing that women should have always shown themselves superior to men when they have had it in their power to display on the throne their natural talents, of which the diadem assured them a free use. Is it not certain that of eight queens, independent and unmarried, seven will be found to have reigned with glory, while of eight kings, we count habitually seven feeble sovereigns.
... The Elizabeths and Catherines did not make war in person, but they knew how to choose their generals; and it is enough that these are good. In every other branch of administration, has not woman given lessons to man? What prince has surpassed in firmness Maria Theresa who, in a disastrous moment, when the fidelity of her subjects was tottering and her ministers were struck with terror, undertook herself alone to inspire all with new courage? She intimidated by her presence, the disaffected Diet of Hungary; she harangued the Magnates in the Latin tongue, and brought her very enemies to swear on their sabres to die for her. This is an indication of the prodigies that would be wrought by feminine emulation in a social order which would permit free scope to her faculties.
"And you, the oppressing sex,—would you not go beyond the faults imputed to women if you, like them, had been moulded by a servile education to believe yourselves automatons created to obey prejudices and to cringe before the master whom chance had given you? Have we not seen your pretensions to superiority confounded by Catharine, who trampled under foot the masculine sex? In creating titled favorites, she trailed man in the dust, and proved that it is possible for him in full liberty to abase himself beneath woman, whose degradation is forced, and consequently, excusable. It would be necessary, to confound the tyranny of man that, for the space of a century, a third sex should exist, which should be both male and female, and stronger than man. This new sex would prove by dint of blows that men as well as women were made for its pleasures; then we should hear men protest against the tyranny of the hermaphrodite sex, and confess that force ought notto be the sole law of right. Now why are these privileges, this independence, which they would reclaim from this third sex, refused by them to women.
"In singling out those women who have had power to soar, from the virago, like Maria Theresia, to those of a gentler type, like the Ninons and the Sévignés, I am authorized in saying that woman, in a state of liberty, will surpass man in all functions of the mind and body which are not the attributes of physical strength.
"Man seems already to foresee this; he becomes indignant and alarmed when women give the lie to the prejudice that accuses them of inferiority.Masculine jealousy has especially broken out against women authors; philosophy has kept them out of academic honors, and has sent them back ignominiously to the household."... (p. 148.)
"What is their existence to-day (that of women)? They exist in privations alone, even in the trades, in which man has encroached on everything,even to the minutest occupations of the needle and the pen, while women are seen employed in the toilsome labors of the field. Is it not scandalous to see athletes thirty years old squatted before a desk, or carrying a cup of coffee with muscular arms, as if there were not women and children enough to attend to the minor details of the counting-room and the household.
"What then are the means of subsistence for women destitute of fortune? The distaff, or else their charms if they have any.Yes, prostitution more or less glossed over is their only resource, which philosophy again contests to them; this is the abject fate to which they are reduced by this civilization, this conjugal slavery which they have not even thought of attacking." (p. 150.)
Fourier bitterly reproaches women authors for having neglected to seek the means whereby to put an end to such a state of affairs, and adds with great reason:
"Their indolence in this respect is one of the causes that have accrued from the contempt of man.The slave is never more contemptible than by a blind submission which persuades the oppressor that his victim was born for slavery., (p. 150)."
Fourier is right, but ... to elevate others is to risk being lost one's self in the crowd; and every one is not capable of this degree of abnegation.
To combat for the right of the weak when men have admitted you to their ranks, is to prepare for yourself a rough way and a heavy cross.
In the first place, you are exposed to the hatred and raillery of men, then half-cultured women corroded by jealousy, invent a thousand calumnies for your destruction; they feign to be scandalized that a woman dare protest against the inferiority and use of her sex; they enter into league with the masters, clamor louder than they and satirize you without mercy.
Now all women are not made to shrug their shoulders in the face of this cohort of morbid minds ... they love peace too well, they lack courage, andthey do not care enough for justice; is it not so, ladies?
Let us return to Fourier. It is known that he admits several social periods. According to him, the pivot of each of them hinges on love and the degree of liberty of woman.
"As a general rule," he says, "social progress and changes of the period will be wrought in proportion to the progress of women towards liberty, and the decay of the social order will be wrought in proportion to the decline of the liberty of women."
In another place, he adds in speaking of philosophers:
"If they treat of morals, they forget to recognize and to claim the rights of the weaker sex,the oppression of which destroys the basis of justice."
He says again, elsewhere:
"Now, God recognizes as liberty only that which is extended to both sexes, and not to one alone; so he has prescribed that all the germs of social evils, as the savage state, barbarism, civilization, should have no other pivot than the enthrallment of women; and that all the germs of social good, as the sixth, seventh and eighth period, should have no other pivot, no other compass, than the progressive affranchisement of the weaker sex."
Fourier is reproached with having desired the emancipation of woman in love; nothing is more true. But to impute this to him as immorality, men must censure their own morals. Now, these gentlemen considering themselves as whollypure, though themselves representing thebutterflyin love, infidelity and the simultaneous possession of several women being only a pastime to them, I do not really see what they can blame in Fourier.
Either what they do is right, and therefore cannot be wrong in woman;
Or what they do is wrong; then why do they do it?
Fourier believed in the unity of the moral law and in the equality of the sexes; he believed in the lawfulness of the morals of these gentlemen,minus perfidy and hypocrisy; this is the reason that he claims emancipation in love for woman: he is logical.
Besides, he repeats continually that the ethics that he depicts would cause disorder in the civilized period;and that they can only be established progressively in subsequent periods. Many among the Phalansterians reject Fourier's ethics with respect to love as well as his Theodicy, and I myself have heard several discourses in which the orator condemned, not only falsity in conjugal relations, but also looseness of morals.
Fourier and the Saint Simonian orthodoxy have both been guilty of the same error with regard to the emancipation of woman; but, men, I repeat, must be very audacious to impute it to them as a crime, since they indulge themselves in worse; as to women, sustained and loved by these reformers, let them imitate the pious conduct of Shem and Japhet; one owes respect to his father, whatever may be the idea or the wine with which he is drunken.
Now that we have cited the master, let us enumerate the principal points of the Fourierist doctrine, touching the liberty of woman and the equality of the sexes:
1. Man and woman are composed of the same physical, moral and intellectual elements; there is, therefore, between the sexes, identity of nature.
2. The proportion of these elements differs in the two sexes, and constitutes the difference that exists between them.
3. This difference is so equalized that the value shall be equal. Where man is the stronger, he takes precedence of woman; where woman is stronger, she takes precedence of man.
4. Man belongs to themajor mode: he has the ascendency over woman in intellect, in logic, in the larger manufactures, in friendship; it belongs to him therefore to create positive science, to connect facts, to regulate commercial relations, to bind together interests, andto organize groups and series. To all these things, woman brings her indispensable aid, but by reason of her aptitudes, her services are only secondary therein.
5. Woman belongs to theminor mode; she has the ascendency over man in the kind of intellect that applies and adapts, in the intuition that puts man on the track of the good to which masculine logic should attain; in the sphere of maternity in which she presides over education, for she comprehends the means to be employed to ameliorate the species in every respect better than man; in the sphere of love in which she has the right and the power to civilize and refine the relations of the sexes; and to stimulate man to conquest of the intellect, to the amelioration of the physical conditions of the globe, of industry, of art, of social relations, etc.
Woman intervenes to a certain point in the major mode, so does man enter into the minor mode, in which his coöperation is indispensable.
Thus, in general, in man the head predominates, in woman, the heart; but as both have a heart and a head, man, through his heart, becomes an aid in the minor mode, and woman, through her head, becomes an aid in the major mode.
6. There are men who are women both in head and in heart; women who are men both in heart and in head; in humanity they form the eighth of an exception. Full liberty and right are granted to them.
7. Each member of the Phalanstery follows his vocation, obeys his attractions,for attractions are proportional to destinies. Therefore the eighth of an exception in both sexes, having an attraction towards labors that belong more especially to the other sex, is at liberty to yield to them.
8. All major men and women have an equal vote.
9. All matters are regulated by chiefsof both sexes, chosen by the free vote of both sexes.
10. All offices, from the presidency of the group to that of the globe, are filled jointly by men and women, who divide between them the details of this common function.
11. The mother is the instructress of her children; they belong to her alone; the father has no rights over them unless the mother chooses to confer these on him.
Such is the summary of the Fourierist doctrine on the subject of which we treat.
If the Societary School has not reached perfect truth, it must be at least acknowledged that it has taken the right way to attain it. Whether its theory of the classification and the predominance of faculties in conformity with the sexes be exact or not, the error will not be productive of mischievous results in practice. Woman being free to follow her aptitudes, being half in rights and functions, could always place herself in the exceptional eighth, without fear of encountering jealous individuals, better fitted than herself to warble in the minor key, who would send her back to the duties of the household.
I remember, in this connection, a certain advocate, by no meansfeminine, professing a superb disdain of the sex to which his mother belonged, worthy in a word, to be the disciple of P. J. Proudhon; would you know what this man had retained of all his lessons in law? The art of sweeping a room properly, of polishing furniture, of hemming napkins and pocket handkerchiefs neatly, and of compounding sauces. Do you not think, illustrious Proudhon, that he might have beenadvised with more justice togo and iron his collars, than certain women who write good articles on Philosophy.
But let us return to Fourier.
Among the Socialist Schools, that of Fourier occupies a distinguished place; it is the one most deserving of the gratitude of women through the principles that it has laid down. Be it understood, we separate in this connection the principles of Liberty and Equality from all that relates to the question of ethics, which we cannot resolve in the same manner as Fourier,any more for woman than man.