Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/442

Rh the whole fertile cultivated region, full of small rural abodes embowered in their wooded parks, and among these the pale yellow-coloured house of the Phalanstery looked like a large mansion. I gazed upon it with cheerful feelings, although I cannot divest my mind of fears as to its stability, more especially as some of its wisest members are not without anxieties regarding its pecuniary difficulties.

This community, and those which resemble it in this country, aim at producing the model community on earth, a perfect state of social life. They call this community the Harmonious, and place it above the old one, which was called the Civilised. The “Civilians” graduate merely in artificial culture; the “Harmonians” in the spiritual, the natural, which in its full state of culture will lead to a perfect, and in all respects harmoniously developed social state.

Nevertheless it seems to me that all the various talents and natural gifts, upon the development of which the perfect development of the community principally depends, cannot here attain to the depth and fulness which is necessary for this purpose. A small community can scarcely furnish scope sufficient for the many dissimilar powers, and these—but I will not say more on this subject. I feel that I am not fully possessed of it, and that the objections which I might make could be met by the answer of the extended sphere of the nursery, which I have here seen. I will rather adhere to that portion of the subject which I understand with my whole heart, which makes the institution dear to me, and which, I am certain, forms a transition point in its life and activity, as regards the life of humanity.

It is a work of Christian human love. It aims at preparing every man and every woman for a harmonious development conformably to their innermost being, by means of a harmonious social life, in which all shall enjoy