great variety of nations, we get higher and more varied degrees of humanity than we could with only one. We know from history that each nation has its peculiar aspect of humanity, what some philosophers term its special IDEA, to represent and actualize in life. This gives a unity to the association, makes it one, directs all efforts to a common end, and gives to all the members what we call a national physiognomy, or character. Without this unity, higher than that of the family, and yet lower than the unity of the race, we should never have any of those manifestations of life expressed in the arts and in literature. Art is always national, never universal. It is Grecian, Roman, Italian, German, French, English, because the artist always projects his own life into the productions of his genius. No doubt the universal forms the basis of all true Art. The race is always in every genuine artistic creation; but it is there through the individual artist, and in the form and coloring of his individual, family, and national life. Who cannot at once perceive the national difference between German life and Italian life in the difference between Italian music and the German, in the light, joyous, yet passionate character of the one, and the deep, tender, domestic, but lofty and enthusiastic character of the other? Without two nations as distinct and as different as the German and the Italian, we should never have been favored with Beethoven and Rossini. We see national life modifying the form of art, the moment we take up one of the simplest of Goethe's songs, and compare it with one of Burns', or one of Béranger's. How much of human life is embodied in and expressed by literature and art, or, rather, by art itself, for art embraces literature! How give to this life the free, full, and varied expression with out various national associations? How, without the nation have a public; and how, without a public, any thing of that which we call public life? Abstract all that belongs to the public from the life of the race, and what would remain? What would remain of all that for which we applaud ourselves, in which we read our capacities, and the promise of future achievements! and therefore for the state, we contend strenuously that it should be constituted not in view of itself, but in view of man's possible communion with all men, as a means of promoting the communion of the race. When constituted in view of itself it becomes exclusive, and instead of extending or facilitating communion, restricts it by confining its members to a communion with each other. This is not only a disadvantage to them, which will show itself in their meagre life, in their narrow notions, their general intellectual and artistic poverty, but it becomes the cause of national hostility, and of those wars at which humanity must always shudder with horror. Compare the intellectual and artistic life of the Chinese with that of the English, French, Germans, and Italians, and you may readily comprehend the effect of national exclusiveness on the life of the people; and the history of the so-called civilized nations from the time of Nimrod to the imprisonment of Europe's royalist Son on the rock of St. Helena, will tell you the effect that the same exclusiveness has on the relations which one nation must unavoidably hold with another. As we have demanded the freedom of property, and the freedom of the family, so now we demand the FREEDOM OF THE STATE or nation. This freedom is expressed in what political economists term FREEDOM OF TRADE. Wars grow out of national exclusiveness, out of the effort of one nation to obtain an undue advantage over another; and nearly all, if not quite all, modern wars may be traced to the restrictive commercial system, a system by which each nation strives in its trade with the other to reap all the advantage. When this system is abandoned, when we learn to allow freedom of commercial intercourse, and to proceed on the principle that the trade between one nation and another cannot in the long run be profitable to either party unless profitable to both, we shall then constitute the Nation in view not of itself, but of the race; in fact, make it a special means of developing and concentrating the energies of each particular nation for the common good of all. We now see what is the basis of Society, what are the conditions of But while we contend for the Nation, individual life and social. We see that man individually and socially lives by communion with nature and with other men, and that the three terms of this communion are Property, Family, and State, or Nation, each constituted not in view of itself, but in view of man's possible communion with all nature, and with all men. We can, then, now very easily dispose of the questions which may arise concerning what is technically denominated the Community System. This system rests on the common basis of society, and is, as has been said, only a special modification of society, or association in a more general sense. It is, then, subject to the same general laws that should govern all society or association. The advocates of the Community System seem to us to propose their system not as an additional term of communion, but as a substitute for the three terms already given. Thus to a very great extent they abolish property, and ask for community in that which is by its very nature necessarily and entirely individual. In the department of Industry they wish to have me labor in view of the community instead of myself. But this is contrary to all the analogies of creation, and the whole order of God's providence. We have already seen that the Identical is realized in the Diverse, the Communal in the Individual. This is only an abstract way of stating a very practical truth, a truth which, if it have any significance, means that the community must be served by the individual, as it were, serving himself. Each globe in our system turns on its own axis; but this, its proper revolution, carries it forward in its revolution round the sun. So each, while laboring for himself, to live his own life, must subserve the life of the whole. This is the order; but the Communists would reverse this order, were they to abolish property, and require a man to be indus/trious from regard to the community, instead of regard to his own independence and well-being, or the independence and well-being of his own family. The substitution of the Community for the Family in the sense in which we have used the term, as appears to be contemplated by our English and perhaps French Communists, would be attended with the most disastrous consequences. The children born under this regulation would be held and treated as children of the Community, not of any particular family. This would destroy all that portion of human life which consists in loving and caring for one's offspring. Parents, feeling no longer the responsibility of parents, would cease to experience the affection of parents, and would therefore be impoverished by the loss of what, to mothers at least, constitutes the richest and most precious portion of their life. The strong love we have for our children, our anxiety on their account, our care and solicitude for their welfare, make often the principal charm of our existence, cheer the darkest habitation, and render delicious the scantiest and coarsest fare of the parents. Poor and miserable indeed should we be were it not for our children, the sweet pledges of our love, in whom we see a new, improved and more beautiful edition of ourselves. The loss of this would be poorly compensated by the greater freedom of sexual intercourse which these Communists propose in its place, a freedom which is itself undesirable, and would be a capital objection to their scheme. The restraints which are now imposed are none too great, and the care and anxiety on account of our children from which they would release us, is a blessing, and almost the only blessing the great mass of us are in a condition to experience. In a word, the Community, on the scale proposed, is too large to be substituted for the family, and by seeking to spread the domestic affections over a broader surface, would weaken and finally destroy them. On the other hand the Community, even as large as Owen or Fourier propose, would be too small to be a substitute for the nation. It will be too small and too weak to aid the life which we have seen that we must owe to the Nation. The Communists, then, must not propose the abolition of Property, the Family, or the State, and the Community as their substitute. If introduced at all, it must be in harmony with these three terms, a term which leaves them all three in their full force, undiminished, unaffected, but coming in between the Family and the State in aid of them both. As an intermediate institution rendering on the one hand the transition from the Family to the State, and on the other from the State to the Family, less abrupt, the Community, if recognizing the conditions pointed out, I am fully persuaded would be a useful auxiliary both to the Family and the State, and a great help to man's communion with man. The distance is too great, at present, between the Family and the Nation; there is an intermediate possible life, that is now unprovided for. Hence the need of an intermediate form is widely felt, and men are everywhere seeking to supply it. In monetary affairs our banking system is an instance of the want and of the attempt to meet it. Our banks are in their nature and intention associa tions for the mutual loan of credit, for enlarging the sphere of credit through the principle of cooperation. Our manufacturing corporations are examples of the same want, and of the effort to meet it, in another department of business. Missionary, Bible, Tract, Temperance, Abolition Associations, are examples of the same in the region of morals and philanthropy. Men feel the need of something larger than the Family, combining more and different elements, yet smaller and more easily wielded than the State. This want may be well met by industrial associations like those at Brook Farm, Northampton and Mendon in Massachusetts, not to specify any others. But these Communities must be industrial establishments, and they must be organized for the production and accumulation of wealth, as well as for the improvement of morals and manners. The physical or material wealth of the world, were it ever so justly and equitably distributed, is inadequate to the wants of humanity. To arrest the world in the production of material wealth where it now is, would be to arrest its progress. It is useless to talk of a learned, a moral, and a cultivated people living in poverty. The thing is not possible. We are to improve the spiritual condition of mankind by improving their worldly condition. Our highest life is scientific and artistic, but science and art come only in the train of industry, and must be preceded by leisure and means. To enrich the world by diminishing its wants, as our mystic philosophers propose, would be to supersede life by death. What we want is the highest, the most varied, and the intensest life. The more wants we have, other things being equal, the better. The study should be to provide for ever-increasing wants; for life consists in satisfying, or in the effort to satisfy our wants. The Community, then, must be organized so as to facilitate the production and acquisition of wealth. It then must not be based on the supposed sinfulness of property, nor the supposed anti-Christian character of trade and business in general. I make this remark because nearly all the schemes I have seen put forth for communities seem to proceed very much upon.an opposite principle, that property is a sin, and that the only vation of the earth. Agriculture holds, legitimate kind of industry is the culti and deservedly, a high rank in the department of Industry, but there is no reason for ranking it above the meand commerce in general. Trade is chanic arts, manufacturing, or trade the grand encourager of all branches of industry. It stimulates manufactures, and these the mechanic arts and agriculture. The promotion of all these demand science, art in all its branches, leisure, which gives wealth and architecture, music, poetry, painting, sculpture. The Community must, then, accept business, and acknowledge its honorableness and honesty, or it will not be able to augment the general wealth of the Nation. Moreover, trade is the grand medium of intermunity, between nation and nation, course between Community and Comand therefore a grand promoter of man's communion with man. Taking this principle into view, the Community must not seek to become a little world in itself. If we understand Fourier's scheme, the phalanx seeks to be self-sufficing. Eighteen hundred, at most two thousand persons, it is said, make up a number adequate to meet all the exigencies of human nature, and to provide for the highest, fullest, and most varied life of humanity. Evidently, then, the disciples of Fourier contemplate no necessity, except it may be by way of amusement, for one community to hold intercourse with another. But a slight glance at the diversities of soil and productions of the different parts of the globe, would satisfy us that some of these phalanxes must be restricted to a very meagre bill of fare. The general and even the particular wants of one phalanx, will be similar to ing-enabling them to bear. But we those of another, but will all positions do not live in one of those periods. in which a phalanx may be planted, Our mission is not to denounce any afford the means for supplying simi- branch of Industry, nor to get rid of lar wants? or shall all that part of business; but to sanctify business, to the earth which will not yield this sanctify industry, and to make it a part supply be suffered to lie waste? or, of the service of God. This is not, in again, do these disciples anticipate our view, precisely the doctrine of the that they shall become able by means majority of those who are seeking to of phalanxes to change the climate meliorate their own and their brethitself, the very temperature of the ren's condition by means of Communiatmosphere, and the entire nature of ties. They seek these Communities the soil, so that they can grow rice and to a very great extent because they cotton on our granite cliffs of New are dissatisfied with the business world England, and enable the polar bear to as it is, and because they feel that luxuriate under the equator? they cannot conscientiously take part it. We are no great believers in the in the ordinary methods of conducting sinlessness of business men, but the tions, in our view, is not here, is not grand motive for forming these associain the ordinary sense of the word, moral; but in the fact, that under our present arrangements a large portion Then, again, there will be great want of economy, for each phalanx to undertake to supply all its wants in itself. It takes nine persons to make a pin to advantage; but will a phalanx of two thousand persons consume all the pins nine persons can manufacture? Similar questions may be asked in relation to almost every branch of mechanical production. They who are engaged in any given branch of mechanical industry, must confine themselves to it, if they mean to excel in it. But most branches are best prosecuted on a scale which would far exceed the powers of consumption of any one phalanx. The Community, then, should never seek to be a complete whole in itself, but, as we said on a former occasion, it should confine itself to some one branch of industry, for which it is best situated. Then it will create more in that line than it can consume; consequently it will have an excess to exchange for such articles as it needs but which it does not produce. Hence, again, the Community must recognize and conform to the general laws of industry and business. It must accept the business world as it finds it, and conform to it while seeking to derive greater advantage from it. These remarks, it will at once be seen, are thrown out for the purpose of admonishing those who are contemplating the establishment of Communities, to beware how they link them with any of the ultraisms of the day, and especially that ultraism which is loudest in condemnation of business. There are periods in the history of inankind, when the true Reformer will preach voluntary poverty, and seek to reform men, not by directing them to create, but by inuring them to suffer of our brethren are and ever must be unable to gain enough of this world's goods, to suffice for the wants of human life. They are unable to live a be mere drudges, living the lowest truly human life. They are and must form of that life possible. We would remedy this. But we can remedy lation, or by moral instruction; we this only to a slight extent by legissee no way of doing it, but by doing in regard to labor what our manufacturers are doing in regard to capital through corporations, and our business is, associate it, and by association inmen with credit through banks, that the time may come when the mass crease its relative power. In this way will not be forced to forego all the adto delve from morning till night, unvantages of civilisation, and be obliged order to obtain the bare means of subcheered, unvisited, mere drudges, in sistence. Of the details of a Community, the writer of this has nothing to say, his' gift not lying in that direction. He has merely sought to exhibit the real basis of all association, and the conditions of human life; and from these to deduce the fundamental principles which must govern all our attempts at communal organization. The application of these principles, he leaves, for the most part, to others, whose practical skill and information better fit them for the task. A PARABLE. BY J. R. LOWELL. WORN and footsore was the Prophet "God of all the olden prophets, "Hear me, guider of my fathers, Grant thy servant but a sign!" Bowing then his head, he listened But the tuft of moss before him And from out the rock's hard bosom "God! I thank thee," said the Prophet, Looking to the holy mountain For the gift of prophecy. "Still thou speakest with thy children Give dominion over Time. "Had I trusted in my nature, And had faith in lowly things, Thou thyself would'st then have sought me, "But I looked for signs and wonders Thirsting to be more than mortal, "Ere I entered on my journey, "In her hand she held a flower Which beside my very threshold |