CHANNING'S BROOK FARM.
We are now on the confines of the Fourier movement. The time-focus
changes from 1826 to 1843. As the period of our history thus
approaches the present time, our resources become more ample and
authentic. Henceforward we shall not confine ourselves so closely to
Macdonald's materials as we have done. The printed literature of
Fourierism is more abundant than that of Owenism; and while we shall
still follow the catalogue of Associations which we gave from
Macdonald in our third chapter, and shall appropriate all that is
interesting in his memoirs, we shall also avail ourselves freely of
various publications of the Fourierists themselves. A full set of
their leading periodicals, (probably the only one in existence) was
thrust upon us by the freak of a half-crazed literary gentleman,
nearly at the very time when we had the good fortune to find
Macdonald's collections. We shall hereafter refer most frequently to
the files of _The Dial_, _The Present_, _The Phalanx_, _The
Harbinger_, and _The Tribune_.
In order to understand the Fourier movement, we must look at the
preparations for it. This we have already been doing, in studying
Owenism. But there were other preparations. Owenism was the
socialistic prelude. We must now attend to what may be called the
religious preparations.
Owenism was limited and local, chiefly because it was thoroughly
non-religious and even anti-religious. In order that Fourierism might
sweep the nation, it was necessary that it should ally itself to some
form of popular religion, and especially that it should penetrate the
strongholds of religious New England.
To prepare for this combination, a differentiation in the New England
church was going on simultaneously with the career of Owenism. After
the war of 1815, the division of Congregationalism into Orthodoxy and
Unitarianism, commenced. Excluding from our minds the doctrinal and
ecclesiastical quarrels that attended this division, it is easy to see
that Providence, which is always on both sides of every fight, aimed
at division of labor in this movement. One party was set to defend
religion; the other liberty. One stood by the old faith, like the Jew;
the other went off into free-thinking and the fine arts, like the
Greek. One worked on regeneration of the heart; the other on culture
of the external life. In short, one had for its function the carrying
through of the Revival system; the other the development of Socialism.
The royal men of these two "houses of Israel" were Dr. Beecher and Dr.
Channing; and both left royal families, direct or collateral. The
Beechers are leading the Orthodox to this day; and the Channings, the
Unitarians. We all know what Dr. Beecher and his children have done
for revivals. He was the pivotal man between Nettleton and Finney in
the last generation, and his children are the standard-bearers of
revival religion in the present. What the Channings have done for
Socialism is not so well known, and this is what we must now bring to
view.
First and chief of all the experiments of the Fourier epoch was BROOK
FARM. And yet Brook Farm in its original conception, was not a Fourier
formation at all, but an American seedling. It was the child of New
England Unitarianism. Dr. Channing himself was the suggester of it. So
says Ralph Waldo Emerson. As this is an interesting point of history,
we have culled from a newspaper report of Mr. Emerson's lecture on
Brook Farm, the following summary, from which it appears that Dr.
Channing was the pivotal man between old-fashioned Unitarianism and
Transcendentalism, and the father of _The Dial_ and of Brook Farm:
EMERSON'S REMINISCENCES OF BROOK FARM.
"In the year 1840 Dr. Channing took counsel with Mr. George Ripley on
the point if it were possible to bring cultivated, thoughtful people
together, and make a society that deserved the name. He early talked
with Dr. John Collins Warren on the same thing, who admitted the
wisdom of the purpose, and undertook to make the experiment. Dr.
Channing repaired to his house with these thoughts; he found a well
chosen assembly of gentlemen; mutual greetings and introductions and
chattings all around, and he was in the way of introducing the general
purpose of the conversation, when a side-door opened, the whole
company streamed in to an oyster supper with good wines, and so ended
that attempt in Boston. Channing opened his mind then to Ripley, and
invited a large party of ladies and gentlemen. I had the honor to be
present. No important consequences of the attempt followed. Margaret
Fuller, Ripley, Bronson and Hedge, and many others, gradually came
together, but only in the way of students. But I think there prevailed
at that time a general belief in the city that this was some concert
of doctrinaires to establish certain opinions, or to inaugurate some
movement in literature, philosophy, or religion, but of which these
conspirators were quite innocent. It was no concert, but only two or
three men and women, who read alone with some vivacity. Perhaps all of
them were surprised at the rumor that they were a school or sect, but
more especially at the name of 'Transcendentalism.' Nobody knows who
first applied the name. These persons became in the common chance of
society acquainted with each other, and the result was a strong
friendship, exclusive in proportion to its heat.***
"From that time, meetings were held with conversation--with very
little form--from house to house. Yet the intelligent character and
varied ability of the company gave it some notoriety, and perhaps
awakened some curiosity as to its aims and results. But nothing more
serious came of it for a long time. A modest quarterly journal called
_The Dial_, under the editorship of Margaret Fuller, enjoyed its
obscurity for four years, when it ended. Its papers were the
contributions and work of friendship among a narrow circle of writers.
Perhaps its writers were also its chief readers. But it had some noble
papers; perhaps the best of Margaret Fuller's. It had some numbers
highly important, because they contained papers by Theodore Parker.**
"I said the only result of the conversations which Dr. Channing had
was to initiate the little quarterly called _The Dial_; but they had a
further consequence in the creation of the society called the "Brook
Farm" in 1841. Many of these persons who had compared their notes
around in the libraries of each other upon speculative matters, became
impatient of speculation, and wished to put it into practice. Mr.
George Ripley, with some of his associates, established a society, of
which the principle was, that the members should be stockholders, and
that while some deposited money others should be allowed to give their
labor in different kinds as an equivalent for money. It contained very
many interesting and agreeable persons. Mr. Curtis of New York, and
his brother of English Oxford, were members of the family; from the
first also was Theodore Parker; Mr. Morton of Plymouth--engaged in the
fisheries--eccentric; he built a house upon the farm, and he and his
family continued in it till the end; Margaret Fuller, with her joyous
conversations and sympathies. Many persons gave character and
attractiveness to the place. The farm consisted of 200 acres, and
occupied some spot near Reedville camp of later years. In and around
it, whether as members, boarders, or visitors, were remarkable persons
for character, intellect and accomplishments. *** The Rev. Wm. H.
Channing, now of London, student of Socialism in France and England,
was a frequent sojourner here, and in perfect sympathy with the
experiment.***
"Brook Farm existed six or seven years, when the society broke up and
the farm was sold, and all parties came out with a loss; some had
spent on it the accumulations of years. At the moment all regarded it
as a failure; but I do not think that all so regard it now, but
probably as an important chapter in their experience, which has been
of life-long value. What knowledge has it not afforded them! What
personal power which the studies of character have given: what
accumulated culture many members owe to it; what mutual pleasure they
took of each other! A close union like that in a ship's cabin, of
persons in various conditions; clergymen, young collegians, merchants,
mechanics, farmers' sons and daughters, with men of rare opportunities
and culture."
Mr. Emerson's lecture is doubtless reliable on the main point for
which we quote from it--the Unitarian and Channing-arian origin of
Brook Farm--but certainly superficial in its view of the substantial
character and final purpose of that Community. Brook Farm, though
American and Unitarian in its origin, became afterward the chief
representative and propagative organ of Fourierism, as we shall
ultimately show. The very blossom of the experiment, by which it
seeded the nation and perpetuated its species, was its periodical,
_The Harbinger_, and this belonged entirely to the Fourieristic period
of its career. Emerson dilates on _The Dial_, but does not allude to
_The Harbinger_. In thus ignoring the public function by which Brook
Farm was signally related to the great socialistic revival of 1843,
and to the whole of American Socialism, Emerson misses what we
conceive to be the main significance of the experiment, and indeed of
Unitarianism itself.
And here we may say, in passing, that this brilliant Community has a
right to complain that its story should have to be told by aliens.
Emerson, who was not a member of it, nor in sympathy with the
socialistic movement to which it abandoned itself, has volunteered a
lecture of reminiscences; and Hawthorne, who joined it only to jilt
it, has given the world a poetico-sneering romance about it; and that
is all the first-hand information we have, except what can be gleaned
from obsolete periodicals. George William Curtis, though he was a
member, coolly exclaims in _Harper's Magazine:_
"Strangely enough, Hawthorne is likely to be the chief future
authority upon 'the romantic episode' of Brook Farm. Those who had it
at heart more than he, whose faith and energy were all devoted to its
development, and many of whom have every ability to make a permanent
record, have never done so, and it is already so much a thing of the
past, that it will probably never be done."
In the name of history we ask, Why has not George William Curtis
himself made the permanent record? Why has not George Ripley taken the
story out of the mouths of the sneerers? Brook Farm might tell its own
story through him, for he _was_ Brook Farm. It was George Ripley who
took into his heart the inspiration of Dr. Channing, and went to work
like a hero to make a fact of it; while Emerson stood by smiling
incredulity. It was Ripley who put on his frock and carted manure, and
set Hawthorne shoveling, and did his best for years to keep work
going, that the Community might pay as well as play. It was no
"picnic" or "romantic episode" or chance meeting "in a ship's cabin"
to him. His whole soul was bent on making a _home_ of it. If a man's
first-born, in whom his heart is bound up, dies at six years old, that
does not turn the whole affair into a joke. There were others of the
same spirit, but Ripley was the center of them.
Brook Farm came very near being a _religious_ Community. It inherited
the spirit of Dr. Channing and of Transcendentalism. The inspiration
in the midst of which it was born, was intensely literary, but also
religious. The Brook Farmers refer to it as the "revival," the
"_newness_," the "_renaissance_." There was evidently an afflatus on
the men, and they wrote and acted as they were moved. _The Dial_ was
the original organ of this afflatus, and contains many articles that
are edifying to Christians of good digestion. It was published
quarterly, and the four volumes of it (sixteen numbers) extended from
July 1840 to April 1844.
The first notice we find of Brook Farm is in connection with an
article in the second volume of _The Dial_ (Oct. 1841), entitled, "_A
Glimpse of Christ's Idea of Society_." The writer of this most devout
essay was Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, then and since a distinguished
literary lady. She was evidently in full sympathy with the "newness"
out of which Brook Farm issued. Margaret Fuller, one of the
constituents of Brook Farm, was editress of _The Dial_, and thus
sanctioned the essay. Its reference to Brook Farm is avowed in a note
at the end, and in a subsequent article. The following extracts give
us
THE ORIGINAL IDEAL OF BROOK FARM.
[From _The Dial_, Oct. 1841.]
"While we acknowledge the natural growth, the good design, and the
noble effects of the apostolic church, and wish we had it, in place of
our own more formal ones, we should not do so small justice to the
divine soul of Jesus of Nazareth, as to admit that it was a main
purpose of his to found it, or that when it was founded it realized
his idea of human society. Indeed we probably do injustice to the
apostles themselves, in supposing that they considered their churches
anything more than initiatory. Their language implies that they looked
forward to a time when the uttermost parts of the earth should be
inherited by their beloved master; and beyond this, when even the
name, which is still above every name, should be lost in the glory of
the Father, who is to be all in all.
"Some persons, indeed, refer all this sort of language to another
world; but this is gratuitously done. Both Jesus and the apostles
speak of life as the same in both worlds. For themselves individually
they could not but speak principally of another world; but they imply
no more than that death is an accident, which would not prevent, but
hasten the enjoyment of that divine life, which they were laboring to
make possible to all men, in time as well as in eternity.***
"The Kingdom of Heaven, as it lay in the clear spirit of Jesus of
Nazareth, is rising again upon vision. Nay, this Kingdom begins to be
seen not only in religious ecstasy, in moral vision, but in the light
of common sense, and the human understanding. Social science begins to
verify the prophecy of poetry. The time has come when men ask
themselves what Jesus meant when he said, 'Inasmuch as ye have not
done it unto the least of these little ones, ye have not done it unto
me.'
"No sooner is it surmised that the Kingdom of Heaven and the Christian
Church are the same thing, and that this thing is not an association
outside of society, but a reorganization of society itself, on those
very principles of love to God and love to man, which Jesus Christ
realized in his own daily life, than we perceive the day of judgment
for society is come, and all the words of Christ are so many trumpets
of doom. For before the judgment-seat of his sayings, how do our
governments, our trades, our etiquettes, even our benevolent
institutions and churches look? What church in Christendom, that
numbers among its members a pauper or a negro, may stand the thunder
of that one word, 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it to the least of
these little ones, ye have not done it unto me?' And yet the church of
Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven, has not come upon earth, according to
our daily prayer, unless not only every church, but every trade, every
form of social intercourse, every institution political or other, can
abide this test.***
"One would think from the tone of conservatives, that Jesus accepted
the society around him, as an adequate framework for individual
development into beauty and life, instead of calling his disciples
'out of the world.' We maintain, on the other hand, that Christ
desired to reorganize society, and went to a depth of principle and a
magnificence of plan for this end, which has never been appreciated,
except here and there, by an individual, still less been carried
out.***
"There _are_ men and women, who have dared to say to one another, Why
not have our daily life organized on Christ's own idea? Why not begin
to move the mountain of custom and convention? Perhaps Jesus's method
of thought and life is the Savior--is Christianity! For each man to
think and live on this method is perhaps the Second Coming of Christ.
To do unto the little ones as we would do unto _him_, would be perhaps
the reign of the Saints--the Kingdom of Heaven. We have hitherto heard
of Christ by the hearing of the ear; now let us see him, let us be
him, and see what will come of that. Let us communicate with each
other and live.***
"There have been some plans and experiments of Community attempted in
this country, which, like those elsewhere, are interesting chiefly as
indicating paths in which we should _not_ go. Some have failed because
their philosophy of human nature was inadequate, and their
establishments did not regard man as he is, with all the elements of
devil and angel within his actual constitution. Brisbane has made a
plan worthy of study in some of its features, but erring in the same
manner. He does not go down into a sufficient spiritual depth, to lay
foundations which may support his superstructure. Our imagination
before we reflect, no less than our reason after reflection, rebels
against this attempt to circumvent moral freedom, and imprison it in
his Phalanx.**
"_The_ church of Christ's Idea, world-embracing, can be founded on
nothing short of faith in the universal man, as he comes out of the
hands of the Creator, with no law over his liberty, but the Eternal
Ideas that lie at the foundation of his Being. Are you a man? This is
the only question that is to be asked of a member of human society.
And the enounced laws of that society should be an elastic medium of
these Ideas; providing for their everlasting unfolding into new forms
of influence, so that the man of time should be the growth of
eternity, consciously and manifestly.
"To form such a society as this is a great problem, whose perfect
solution will take all the ages of time; but let the Spirit of God
move freely over the great deep of social existence, and a creative
light will come at his word; and after that long evening in which we
are living, the morning of the first day shall dawn on a Christian
society.***
"N.B. A Postscript to this Essay, giving an account of a specific
attempt to realize its principles, will appear in the next number."
Thus, according to this writer, Brook Farm, in its inception, was an
effort to establish the kingdom of God on earth; that kingdom in which
"the will of God shall be done as it is done in heaven;" a higher
state than that of the apostolic church; worthy even to be called the
Second Coming of Christ, and the beginning of the day of judgment! A
high religious aim, surely! and much like that proposed by the Shakers
and other successful Communities, that have the reputation of being
fanatical.
The reader will notice that Miss Peabody, on behalf of Brook Farm,
disclaims Fourierism, which was then just beginning to be heard of
through Brisbane's _Social Destiny of Man_, first published in 1840.
In the next number of _The Dial_ Miss Peabody fulfills her promise of
information about Brook Farm, in an article entitled, "_Plan of the
West Roxbury Community_." Some extracts will give an idea of the first
tottering steps of the infant enterprise:
THE ORIGINAL CONSTITUTION OF BROOK FARM.
[From _The Dial_, Jan. 1842.]
"In the last number of _The Dial_, were some remarks, under the
perhaps ambitious title of, 'A Glimpse of Christ's Idea of
Society;' in a note to which it was intimated, that in this
number would be given an account of an attempt to realize in
some degree this great Ideal, by a little company in the midst
of us, as yet without name or visible existence. The attempt is
made on a very small scale. A few individuals, who, unknown to
each other, under different disciplines of life, reacting from
different social evils, but aiming at the same object,--of
being wholly true to their natures as men and women--have been
made acquainted with one another, and have determined to become
the Faculty of the Embryo University.
"In order to live a religious and moral life worthy the name,
they feel it is necessary to come out in some degree from the
world, and to form themselves into a community of property, so
far as to exclude competition and the ordinary rules of trade;
while they reserve sufficient private property, or the means of
obtaining it, for all purposes of independence, and isolation at
will. They have bought a farm, in order to make agriculture the
basis of their life, it being the most direct and simple in
relation to nature. A true life, although it aims beyond the
highest star, is redolent of the healthy earth. The perfume of
clover lingers about it. The lowing of cattle is the natural
bass to the melody of human voices. [Here we have the old
farming hobby of the socialists.]***
"The plan of the Community, as an economy, is in brief this: for
all who have property to take stock, and receive a fixed
interest thereon: then to keep house or board in commons, as
they shall severally desire, at the cost of provisions purchased
at wholesale, or raised on the farm; and for all to labor in
community, and be paid at a certain rate an hour, choosing their
own number of hours, and their own kind of work. With the
results of this labor and their interest, they are to pay their
board, and also purchase whatever else they require at cost, at
the warehouses of the Community, which are to be filled by the
Community as such. To perfect this economy, in the course of
time they must have all trades and all modes of business carried
on among themselves, from the lowest mechanical trade, which
contributes to the health and comfort of life, to the finest
art, which adorns it with food or drapery for the mind.
"All labor, whether bodily or intellectual, is to be paid at the
same rate of wages; on the principle that as the labor becomes
merely bodily, it is a greater sacrifice to the individual
laborer to give his time to it; because time is desirable for
the cultivation of the intellectual, in exact proportion to
ignorance. Besides, intellectual labor involves in itself higher
pleasures, and is more its own reward, than bodily labor.***
"After becoming members of this Community, none will be engaged
merely in bodily labor. The hours of labor for the Association
will be limited by a general law, and can be curtailed at the
will of the individual still more; and means will be given to
all for intellectual improvement and for social intercourse,
calculated to refine and expand. The hours redeemed from labor
by community, will not be re-applied to the acquisition of
wealth, but to the production of intellectual goods. This
Community aims to be rich, not in the metallic representative of
wealth, but in the wealth itself, which money should represent;
namely, LEISURE TO LIVE IN ALL THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. As a
Community, it will traffic with the world at large, in the
products of agricultural labor; and it will sell education to as
many young persons as can be domesticated in the families, and
enter into the common life with their own children. In the end
it hopes to be enabled to provide, not only all the necessaries,
but all the elegances desirable for bodily and for spiritual
health: books, apparatus, collections for science, works of art,
means of beautiful amusement. These things are to be common to
all; and thus that object, which alone gilds and refines the
passion for individual accumulation, will no longer exist for
desire, and whenever the sordid passion appears, it will be seen
in its naked selfishness. In its ultimate success, the Community
will realize all the ends which selfishness seeks, but involved
in spiritual blessings, which only greatness of soul can aspire
after.
"And the requisitions on the individuals, it is believed, will
make this the order forever. The spiritual good will always be
the condition of the temporal. Every one must labor for the
Community in a reasonable degree, or not taste its benefits.***
Whoever is willing to receive from his fellow men that for which
he gives no equivalent, will stay away from its precincts
forever. But whoever shall surrender himself to its principles,
shall find that its yoke is easy and its burden light.
Everything can be said of it, in a degree, which Christ said of
his kingdom, and therefore it is believed that in some measure
it does embody his idea. For its gate of entrance is strait and
narrow. It is literally a pearl hidden in a field. Those only
who are willing to lose their life for its sake shall find it.
Its voice is that which sent the young man sorrowing away: 'Go
sell all thy goods and give to the poor, and then come and
follow me.' 'Seek first the kingdom of Heaven and its
righteousness, and all other things shall be added to you.'***
"There may be some persons at a distance, who will ask, To what
degree has this Community gone into operation? We can not answer
this with precision, but we have a right to say that it has
purchased the farm which some of its members cultivated for a
year with success, by way of trying their love and skill for
agricultural labor; that in the only house they are as yet rich
enough to own, is collected a large family, including several
boarding scholars, and that all work and study together. They
seem to be glad to know of all who desire to join them in the
spirit, that at any moment, when they are able to enlarge their
habitations, they may call together those that belong to them."
Thus far it is evident that Brook Farm was not a Fourier formation.
Whether the beginnings of the excitement about Fourierism may not have
secretly affected Dr. Channing and the Transcendentalists, we can not
say. Brisbane's first publication and Dr. Channing's first suggestion
of a Community (according to Emerson) took place in the same
year--1840. But Brook Farm, as reported by Miss Peabody, up to January
1842 had nothing to do with Fourierism, but was an original Yankee
attempt to embody Christianity as understood by Unitarians and
Transcendentalists; having a constitution (written or unwritten)
invented perhaps by Ripley, or suggested by the collective wisdom of
the associates. Without any great scientific theory, it started as
other Yankee experiments have done, with the purpose of feeling its
way toward co-operation, by the light of experience and common sense;
beginning cautiously, as was proper, with the general plan of
joint-stock; but calling itself a Community, and evidently bewitched
with the idea which is the essential charm of all Socialisms, that it
is possible to combine many families into one great home. Moreover
thus far there was no "advertising for a wife," no gathering by public
proclamation. The two conditions of success which we named as primary
in a previous chapter, viz., _religious principle_ and _previous
acquaintance_, were apparently secured. The nucleus was small in
number, and well knit together by mutual acquaintance and spiritual
sympathy. In all this, Brook Farm was the opposite of New Harmony.
If we take Rev. William H. Channing, nephew and successor of Dr.
Channing, as the exponent of Brook Farm--which we may safely do, since
Emerson says he was "a frequent sojourner there, and in perfect
sympathy with the experiment"--we have evidence that the Community had
not fallen into the ranks of Fourierism at a considerably later
period. On the 15th of September 1843, Mr. Channing commenced
publishing in New York a monthly Magazine called _The Present_, the
main object of which was nearly the same as that of _The Dial_, viz.,
the discussion of religious Socialism, as understood at Brook Farm and
among the Transcendentalists; and in his third number (Nov. 15) he
used language concerning Fourier, which _The Phalanx_, Brisbane's
organ (then also just commencing), criticised as disrespectful and
painfully offensive.
From this indication, slight as it is, we may safely conclude that the
amalgamation of Brook Farm and Fourierism had not taken place up to
November 1843, which was more than two years after Miss Peabody's
announcement of the birth of the Community. So far Brook Farm was
American and religious, and stood related to the Fourier revival only
as a preparation. So far it was _Channing's_ Brook Farm. Its story
after it became _Fourier's_ Brook Farm will be reserved for the end of
our history of Fourierism.