Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/521

 O U F U 489 Upon this the society itself subscribed the fees requisite for a diploma (250), which was obtained by Fourcroy iti 1780; but as the degree of &quot;docteur regent&quot; was unanimously refused, it was impossible for him to procure any professorship under the faculty. However, in 1784 his reputation as a chemist gained for him, although Berthollet was his fellow candidate, the lectureship of chemistry at the college of the Jardin du Hoi, which had become vacant by the death of Macquer, one of the last of the phlogistic school. This post he continued to hold for the next 25 years; and so great were the crowds which his eloquence attracted that it was twice necessary to enlarge his lecture-theatre. Fourcroy was one of the first con verts to the theories of Lavoisier, which he designated &quot; La Chimie Franchise,&quot; a name which, as Thomson remarks (History of Chemistry, ii. p. 130), &quot; certainly contributed more than anything else to give the new notions currency, at least in France.&quot; Together with Berthollet, Fourcroy was associated with Lavoisier and Guyton de Morveau in 1786 and 1787 in the preparation of a work entitled Methode de Nomenclature Chimique, published in the latter year. In 1785 a memoir on the tendons, subsequently completed in six parts, gained for him admission into the French Academy of Sciences. He became in 1792 one of the deputies of the National Convention, and in 1793 a member of the Assembly, and soon proved himself one of the most active of the committee for the public instruction. To him was due the enlargement of the Jardin des Plantes, and the formation of a commission for the preservation of works of art. He further was the means of releasing from imprisonment Desault, surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu, and of preventing the execution of Darcet, though, unfortunately i or science, he found no opportunity of rescuing Lavoisier. On the 9th of Thermidor he was appointed a member of the committee for the public safety, and in this capacity he instituted three schools of medicine, assisted in the organization of the Nicole Polytechnique (at that time the Ecole des Travaux Publiques), and was concerned also in the establishment of the Ecole Normale, the Institut, and the Muse&quot;e d Histoire Naturelle. After the revolution of the 9th November 1799 he was made a councillor of state ; and, being appointed director-general of instruction, he in the course of 5 years superintended the formation of 12 schools of law, over 30 lyceums, afterwards called royal colleges, and 300 elementary schools. His incessant labours at length told on his health, and he suffered greatly from palpitation of the heart. On the 16th December 1809, the very day on which by letters patent he had been created a count of the French empire, with a yearly pension of 20,000 francs, he was signing some despatches when he suddenly exclaimed &quot; Je suis mort,&quot; and with those words expired. Among the separate publications of Fourcroy are Lemons elemen- taires d Histoire naturelle, et de Chimie, 2 vols. 8vo, 1782, enlarged, after several editions, to 10 vols. 8vo, with the title Systeme des Connaissances chimiqucs, 6 vols. 4 to, 1801-2 ; Memoires et Observa- tions de Chimie, 8vo, 1784; L Art de connaltre et d employer les Hfediccnnens dans les Maladies, 2 vols. 8vo, 1785 ; Essai sur le Phlogistiqiie et les Acides, 8vo, 1788, from the English of Kirwan, with notes by De Morveau and De Fourcroy ; Philosophic Chimique, oil, Verites fondamentales de la Chimie moderne, 8vo, 1795, perhaps his best work, of which several editions and translations appeared ; Notice sur la Vie et les Travaux de Lavoisier, 8vo, 1796; Tableaux synoptiques de Chimie, 4to, 1800; Discours sur V Instruction pub- lique, 8vo, 1802. He was the author of more than 160 papers on chemical subjects, contributed to the Memoires of the Academy and the Institute, the Annalcs de Chimie, and the Annnles de MtLsee d Histoire Naturelle, and was editor of Le Medecin Eclaire. The more important of his later researches were published jointly in his own name and that of Vanquelin, whom he befriended, and was the means of first bringing into notice. See Palissot de Beauvois, loge Historique, 1810; G. Cuvier, &quot;^loge His- torique,&quot; Mtm. de I /mt., 1810, pp. xcvi.-cxxviii., and Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat., xvii. 1811, pp. 99-13- ; Thomson, Anna s, I., 1818 FOURIER, FRANCOIS CHARLES MARIE (1772-1837), one of the most celebrated socialist writers, was born at Besan^on in Franche-Comte, on the 7th April 1772. His father was a draper in good circumstances, and Fourier received an excellent education at the college in his native town. After completing his studies there he travelled for some time in France, Germany, and Holland. On the death of his father he inherited a considerable amount of property, which, however, was lost when Lyons was besieged by the troops of the Convention. Being thus deprived of his means of livelihood, Fourier entered the army, but after two years service as a chasseur was discharged on account of ill-health. In 1803 he published a remarkable article on European politics which attracted the notice of Napoleon, some of whose ideas were foreshadowed in it. Inquiries were made after the author, but nothing seems to have come of them. After leaving the army Fourier entered a merchant s office in Lyons, and some years later undertook on his own account a small business as broker. He obtained in this way just sufficient to supply his wants, and devoted all his leisure time to the elaboration of his first work on the organization of society. During the early part of his life, and while engaged in commerce, he had become deeply impressed with the conviction that social arrangements resulting from the principles of individualism and competition were essentially imperfect and immoral. He proposed to substitute for these principles co-operation or united effort, by means of which full and harmonious development might be given to human nature. The scheme, worked out in detail in his first work, Theorie des Quatre Mouvements (2 vols., Lyons, 1808, published anonymously), has for foundation a particular psychological proposition and a special economical doctrine. Psychologically Fourier held what may with some laxity of language be called natural optimism, the view that the full, free development of human nature or the unrestrained indulgence of human passion is the only possible way to happiness and virtue, and that misery and vice spring from the unnatural restraints imposed by society on the gratification of desire. This principle of harmony among the passions he regarded as his grandest discovery a dis covery which did more than set him on a level with Newton, the discoverer of the principle of attraction or harmony among material bodies. Throughout his works, in uncouth, obscure, and often unintelligible language, he endeavours to show that the same fundamental fact of harmony is to be found in the four great departments, society, animal life, organic life, and the material universe. In order to give effect to this principle and obtain the resulting social harmony, it was needful that society should be reconstructed ; for, as the social organism is at present constituted, innumerable restrictions are imposed upon the free development of human desire. As practical principle for such a reconstruction Fourier advocated co-operative or united industry. In many respects what he says of co-operation, in particular as to the enormous waste cf economic force which the actual arrangements of society entail, still deserves attention, and some of the most recent efforts towards extension of the co-operative method, e.g., to house-keeping, were in essentials anticipated by him. But the full realization of his scheme demanded much more than the mere admission that co-operation is economically more efficacious than individualism. Society as a whple must be organized on the lines requisite to give full scope to co-operation and to the harmonious evolution of human nature. The details of this reorganization of the social structure cannot be given briefly, but the broad outlines may be thus sketched. Society, on his scheme, is to be divided into departments or phalanges, each phalange numbering about 1600 persons. Each phalange inhabits IX. 62