ABSTRACT
The superiority of enthusiasm over regular administration could have seemed much more obvious to Charles Fourier's contemporaries, since the empire was dead because of administration and regularity. It lost power the moment the old enthusiasm diminished; the imperial government was very far from having as many eminent warriors as the revolutionary anarchy had. Fourier is an evocator of spirits, as chimeric as any spiritualist. Fourier spends much discussion on new sexual customs. He translates well the disillusions of many of his contemporaries when he inveighs against those who have only pompous phrases and against the inventors of meaningless concepts. The Protestants are ardently involved in the cooperative movement and an influence on the idea of cooperation is attributed to Fourier. On economic questions, Fourier only knows the echo of eighteenth-century agronomy; he pushes all the illusions of his predecessors to extremes.
