In 1854, Comte’s Positive Philosophy and Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity fell under my observation. Many years before I had read Fourier. His system, by itself, however, seemed to me to lack foundation. But Comte furnished that foundation, and Feuerbach’s demonstration of the naturalness of “supernaturalism” precluded the possibility of my coming to any other conclusion in the premises than that the religious idea was the index to, and nature’s guaranty for, that Heaven on earth, of which Fourier was the prophet, but which he, unfortunately, attempted to minutely describe at too great a distance, and thus fell into vagaries, with respect to particulars, which did much to obscure, and bring into contempt, his most profound and transcendently brilliant discoveries.
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