The Arcades Project - Operi

since the invention of the chariot;' Here, too, he stresses the lack of any genuine
scientific and complex character. Victor Considerant, Deraisan et dangers de l'engauement
pour les chemins enflr (Paris, 1838). The contents first appeared, in large
part, in La Phalange. [W9,3]
Consi(Hrant argues that the work of engineers should he focused not on the improvement
of the track hut on the improvement of the means of transport. Wronski
to whom he refers, appears to be thinking primarily of an improved form of
wheel or of its replacement by something else. Thus, Considerant writes: "'Is it not
clear . . . that the discovery of a machine that would facilitate locomotion over
ordinary routes, and increase . . . the present speed of transportation on these
routes, would devastate, from top to hottom, the entire enterprise of' the railroads?
. .. Hence, a discovery not only possible but indeed probable can annihilate,
at one blow and forever, the extraordinary amounts of capital that some
people have proposed be sunk into the railway system!" Victor Considerant,
Deraison et dangers de l'engouement pour les chemins enfer (Paris, 1838), p. 63.
[W9a,l]
"'The operation of railroads . . . forced humanity into the position of comhating
nature's works everywhere on earth, of filling up valleys and hreaching mountains,
... of' struggling finally, by means of a general system, against the natural
conditions of the planet's terrain, . .. and replacing them universally by the opposite
sort of conditions." Victor Considerant, Deraison et dangers de I 'engouenwnt
pour les chemins enfer (Paris, 1838), 1'1'. 52-53. [W9a,2]
Charles Gide on the "'divinatory genius" of Fourier : "'When he writes: "A certain
vessel from London arrives in China today; tomorrow the planet Mer(ury, having
been advised of the arrivals and movements of ships by the astronomers of Asia,
will transmit the list to the astronomers of London,' and if we transpose this
prophecy into current vernacular so that it reads, 'When a ship arrives in China,
the T. S. F. will transmit the news to t.he Eiffel Tower or to London,? then it is clear,
I believe, that we have here an extraordinary anticipation. For what he means to
say is precisely this: the planet Mercury is there to represent a force, as yet unknown,
which would enahle the transmission of messages-a force of which he has
had a presentiment." Charles Gide, Fou.rier precurseur de la cooperation (Paris