There was far less resemblance, it
is true, than the world chose to imagine, inasmuch as the two
theories differed, as widely as the zenith from the nadir, in their
main principles.
I talked about Fourier to Hollingsworth, and translated, for his
benefit, some of the passages that chiefly impressed me.
"When, as a consequence of human improvement," said I, "the globe
shall arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be
converted into a particular kind of lemonade, such as was fashionable
at Paris in Fourier's time. He calls it limonade a cedre. It is
positively a fact! Just imagine the city docks filled, every day,
with a flood tide of this delectable beverage!"
"Why did not the Frenchman make punch of it at once?" asked
Hollingsworth. "The jack-tars would be delighted to go down in ships
and do business in such an element."
I further proceeded to explain, as well as I modestly could, several
points of Fourier's system, illustrating them with here and there a
page
or two, and asking Hollingsworth's opinion as to the expediency of
introducing these beautiful peculiarities into our own practice.
"Let me hear no more of it!" cried he, in utter disgust. "I never
will forgive this fellow! He has committed the unpardonable sin; for
what more monstrous iniquity could the Devil himself contrive than to
choose the selfish principle,--the principle of all human wrong, the
very blackness of man's heart, the portion of ourselves which we
shudder at, and which it is the whole aim of spiritual discipline to
eradicate,--to choose it as the master workman of his system? To
seize upon and foster whatever vile, petty, sordid, filthy, bestial,
and abominable corruptions have cankered into our nature, to be the
efficient instruments of his infernal regeneration! And his
consummated Paradise, as he pictures it, would be worthy of the
agency which he counts upon for establishing it.
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