The Arcades Project - Operi

the heart, so as to bring the blood directly to the heart without having it pass
through the lungs . ... Nature will evolve in such fashion, he maintains, that a time
will come when oranges blossom in Siberia and the most dangerous animals have
been replaced by their opposites. Anti-lions, anti-whales will be at man's service
then, and the calm will drive his ships. In this way, according to Fourier, the lion
will serve as the best of horses and the shark will be as useful in fishing as the dog
is in hunting. New stars will emerge to take the place of the moon, which already,
by then, will have begun to rot." Sigmund Englander, Geschichte der JranzosischenArbeiter-Associationen
(Hamburg, 1864), vol. 1, pp. 240-244. [WIa]
Fourier, ... in his last years, . .. wanted to found a phalanstery that would be
inhabited exclusively by dilldren aged three to fourteen, of which he aimed to
assemble 12,000; but his appeal went unheeded and the project was never realized.
In his writings he left a detailed plan, which specifically describes how the
ehildren must be raised so as to further the idea of association. From the moment
a child begins to walk, an attempt must be made to identify its tastes and passions,
and, by this means, to diseover its vocation. Children who show a liking for life in
the street, who make a racket and refuse to learn neatness and cleanliness, are
placed by Fourier in small bands which have eharge of the more unpleasant tasks
of the association. On the other side there are children in whom the taste for
elegance and luxury is inborn; these again Fourier arranges in a group, so that by
their presence on the scene the phalanx will not be lacking in luxury . . . . The
children are to become . .. great artists of song. Every phalanx, Fourier says, will
have 700 to 300 actors, musicians, and dancers, and the poorest canton in the Alps
or the Pyrenees will have an opera company at least as good as the Grand Opera of
Paris, if not much better. In order to foster the general sense for harmony, Fourier
would have the children already singing duets and trios in the nursery." Sigmund
Englander, Geschichte der franzosischen Arbeiter-Associationen (Hamburg,
1864), vol. 1, pp. 242-243. [W2,I]
"Among the disciples of Fourier, one of the most entcrtaining was this Alphonse
Toussenel, who, in 1347 and 1352 respectively, published those works so popular
in their day, L'Esprit des betes and Le Monde des oisectux . ... Like Fourier, . ..
he sees in nature only animate beings: The planets,' he affirms, have great duties
to fulfill, first as members of the solar system, then as mothers of families.' And he
voluptuously describes the amours of the Earth and the Sun: As the lover dresses
in Iris most beautiful robes, and glosses his hair, and perfumes his language for the
visit of his love, thus every morning the Earth indues her richest attire to meet the
rays of her star beloved . ... Happy, thrice happy the Earth, that no council of the
stars has yet thundcred its anathema against t.he immorality of the kisses of the
Sun!' . .. Professors of the officially sanctioned physical sciences dare not speak
of the two sexes of electricity; they find it more moral to speak of its two poles . ...
Such absurdities are beyond me . ... If the fire of love did not kindle all beings,
metals and minerals as well as others, where, I ask, would be the reason for those
ardent affinities of potassium fot' oxygen, of hydrochloric acid for water?m