Part 2 (1/2)
Many of the pupils became interested in the new life with which they came in contact. It influenced them for good, and in after years they were full of grat.i.tude and praise for the help and moral tone it imparted to them. An extract from a letter from Mr. Richard F. Fuller, the father of Margaret Fuller, to Mr. Ripley at this time reads as follows:--
”A lady asked me not long since where she should send her daughter to school. I said at once, to the _Community_, for there she would learn for the first time, perhaps, that all these matters of creed and morals are not quite so well settled as to make thinking nowadays a piece of supererogation, and would learn to distinguish between truth and the 'sense sublime,' and the dead dogmas of the past. This is the great benefit I believe you confer upon the young.”
The pupil who became most prominent was George William Curtis, who always acknowledged the beneficial effect it had upon all his future career.
New England and New York sent in their share of pupils until the accommodations were crowded. The school flourished. It was not large, but select. It was necessary to have more room, and a neighbor's cottage was hired. Enthusiasts wished to build on the place. Plans of procedure for the a.s.sociation were indefinite. The central idea of justice to all men and women was ever uppermost. Mrs. Olvord, a lady of means, built a small gabled cottage of wood, which, owing to ill health, she was able to occupy but a short time. At the highest point of the domain, on a ledge of ”pudding-stone,” the a.s.sociation erected a small, square, wooden building which was named ”the Eyrie,” and at another period a large double or twin house was built to be conjointly occupied by two brothers from Plymouth, Ma.s.s., of the name of Morton; it was called ”the Pilgrim House.” The original farmhouse was christened ”the Hive.” The cultivation of the farm proceeded, and some ornamentation in the shape of flower-beds was done around the houses.
It was soon found that much milk was needed at home, and the sale of it was discontinued.
A few individuals making a common family on a farm near a city, would seem to be too unimportant a matter to excite much comment now, even though the people who did it were superior in attainments, of high purpose, and above criticism in their moral and social standing; but at this date of our country's history, all thoughtful people in New England seemed to be gaping at them with curiosity and wonder, and comments were unlimited. As they were neither dogmatists, nor active fanatics who brandished anathemas of terror and destruction at those who followed not in their ways, but simply and unostentatiously attended to their own business, and seemed to care very little for what anyone said derogatory to their proceedings, the conditions appeared so unique, that interest in their doings increased day by day.
Mr. Ripley wrote of it a few months after its commencement: ”We are now in full operation as a family of workers, teachers and students. We feel the deepest convictions that, for us, our mode of life is the true one, and no attraction would tempt any one of us to exchange it for that we have quitted lately.” And it would be an impertinence now to penetrate into its private circles and bring its members and doings to the gaze of an investigating and curious public, were it not that its doings and its members have become, from their relation to social science, a part of public history.
The pressure of life was off at Brook Farm, for the nonce. What anyone did that was out of the common, might cause smiles and laughter but no frowns or scoldings. Each felt and believed in the demonstration of his or her own individuality, and, as a first consequence, there was something that was often mistaken, by strangers, for rudeness and want of order. Some forgot that it was especially work they came for, and were anxious to have their theories discussed. Independence in dress was universal. The Mrs. Grandys were all away, and if the young ladies thought it was prettier to exhibit the grace of flowing tresses than to bind them up in ”pugs” behind their heads, who should, who could, object?
Prim Margaret Fuller, who was a visitor--and never a member of the community as has often been stated--professed herself disturbed, at first, by the easy and perhaps indifferent manner in which they listened to her long conversations, as they sat on the floor or on crickets; but on a later visit, she expressed herself as better pleased. Doubtless some of the individual angularities had been rubbed off, by this time, by the pleasant but close contact of the Community life--and some of hers as well.
CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND DEVELOPMENT.
Two years of the experimental and ”idyllic” life, ran rapidly away, and the Community had gained something of position and name in the outward world. Personal contact had modified the extreme views of many of the founders. Changes had taken place in the Individuals composing it; some had departed. Six of the original stockholders remained. The number had increased to about seventy, including some thirty who were pupils. The financial success had not been all that was desired. Everything else was getting more settled. The social life was charming. Improvements in material matters, in comforts, in discipline and in grace of manners were visible. But what was to be developed next among all the things desirable? Was it to push the school still further in progress, to attach mechanical industries to the organization, to work up the farm life into more prominence, or what?
It could not be expected that this large number of persons, whose early surroundings and ideas had been so varied, could at once agree as to what next steps were necessary to take, or to what definite end the Community should be shaped. There was need, certainly, of some central purpose strong enough for all to unite upon to inspire permanence.
Neither Mr. Ripley nor any of his co-workers had heard of Charles Fourier--the French exponent of industrial a.s.sociation--or his doctrines, unless in a most casual way, and certainly they had not studied them when they started the Community. They were independent workers in a field of social science; but when they became acquainted with his ideas, especially his ideas of industry made attractive by organized labor, and its relation to the higher standard of work and liberal belief they had adopted and maintained thus far, their enthusiasm was awakened for them and they resolved to graft some of his formulas on their inst.i.tution. The little Community, with its bright, cheerful school and its happy members, was not paying its way. There were philosophers enough in it. There were plenty of sweet, charming characters and amateur workmen in it, but the hard-fisted toilers and the brave financiers were absent.
Still, it was not entirely absence of financial success that led the responsible men of the Community to make the change in the organization that they did, but truly because the grand and reasonable ideas of the distinguished Frenchman bore such internal evidences of harmony with human nature and with G.o.d's providence and laws that they carried conviction to the great and sympathetic minds of Brook Farm. Fourier argued that there was a sublime destiny for mankind on this earth, that the Creator was infinitely good, that all the instincts of our nature, when not subverted by bad conditions, pointed towards that destiny, and that humanity was on its way upward--that the past progress argued what the future might be.
I give as ill.u.s.trations, a few extracts from ”The Social Destiny of Man,” by Albert Brisbane, page 269:--”Four societies have existed on the earth--the savage, patriarchal, barbarian and civilized. Under these general heads may be cla.s.sed the various social forms through which man has progressed up to the present day. _If four have existed may not a fifth, or even a sixth, be discovered and organized?_ Common sense would dictate that there could, although the world has entertained a different opinion.”
Page 293: ”If the barbarian a.s.serts that the lash is the only means of forcing the slave to labor, the civilized is not far behind him in his reasoning, for he will a.s.sert with equal confidence that necessity and want are necessary stimulants to industry. The barbarian is as ignorant of the levers which civilization puts in play as is the civilized of the powerful incentives to action which the groups and series will call forth.”
Page 464: ”If He [G.o.d] has not known how or has not wished to give us a social code productive of justice, industrial attraction and pa.s.sional harmony;--_if he has not known how_, how could he have supposed our weak reason would succeed in a task in which he himself doubted of success? _If he has not wished_, how can our legislators hope to organize a society which would lead to the results above mentioned, and of which he wished to deprive us.... What motive could he have had to refuse us such a code? Six views may be taken on the subject of this omission.
”_First--either he has not known how_ to give us a social code guaranteeing truth, justice and industrial attraction; in this case why create in us the want of it, without having the means of satisfying that want which he satisfies in creatures inferior to us, to which he a.s.signs a mode of existence adapted to their attractions and instincts:
”Second--_or he has not wished_ to give us this code; which thus supposes the Creator to be the persecutor of mankind, creating in us wants which it is impossible to satisfy, inasmuch as none of our codes can extirpate our permanent scourges:
”Third--_or he has known how and has not wished_; in which case the Creator becomes a malignant being, knowing how to do good, but preferring the reign of evil:
”Fourth--_or he has wished and has not known how_; in this case he is incapable of governing us, knowing and wis.h.i.+ng the good which he cannot realize, and which we still less can attain:
”Fifth--_or he has neither wished nor known how_; and we must attribute to him both want of genius and evil intention:
”Sixth--_or he has known how and has wished_; in this case the code exists, and he must have provided a mode for its revelation--for of what use would it be if it were to remain hidden from men for whom it is destined?”
Page 468: ”If the human race were at the commencement of their social career--in the first ages of civilization--they would perhaps be excusable for founding some hope of social good upon human science, upon the legislation of man; but long experience has proved the impotency of human legislation, and shown clearly that the world has nothing to hope from human laws and civilized const.i.tutions.”
Page 260: ”Either the pa.s.sions _are_ bad or the social mechanism _is false_, for evil prevails, and to a melancholy extent. If the former be true, then there is no hope of a better state of things, for every means of repression and constraint that human ingenuity could invent has been applied to regulate their action; but all in vain--they have remained unchanged, and in the eyes of the moralist as perverse as ever. If, however, the latter be true--that is, if the social mechanism be false--then there is a chance for a better future; for our incoherent and absurd societies are changing more or less with every century. They are at the mercy or whim of a tyrant, or of a revolution of the ma.s.s; they may therefore be reformed or done away with entirely.”