Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/107

Rh In my conversation with the two sensible women, my conductresses, I learned various particulars regarding the laws and life of the Phalanstery; among others, that they are wise enough not to allow the public to absorb private property. Each individual may invest as much as he likes in the association, and retain as much of his own property as he wishes. For that which he so invests he receives interest. The time required for labour is ten hours a day. All who work over hours are paid for such over work. The women participate in all rights equally with the men: vote, and share in the administration of law and justice. “But,” said Mrs. A., “we have had so much to do with our domestic affairs, that we have hitherto troubled ourselves very little about these things.”

Any one who makes known his desire to become a member may be received as such after a probation of one year in the Phalanstery, during which time he must have shown himself to be unwearied in labour, and stedfast in brotherly love and good will. As regards his religion, rank, or his former mode of life, no questions are asked. The association makes a new experiment in social and economic life: it regards the active principle of love as the ruling power of life, and wishes to place everything within the sphere of its influence; it will, so to say, begin life anew, and makes experimental researches into its laws; like those plants called exogens, it grows from the exterior inwards, but has, it appears to me, its principle much less determinate than the vegetable.

Being asked in the evening my opinion of this community, I candidly confessed in what it appeared to be deficient; in particular as regarded a profession of religion and public divine service; its being based merely upon a moral principle, the validity of which might be easily called in question, as they did not recognise a connection with a life existing eternally beyond earth and time, with any eternally binding law, nor even with a divine Lawgiver.