CRUCIBLE OF REVOLUTION 17his best-known disciple, carried Fourierism to Texas; and Brook
Farm in Massachusetts and the North American Phalanx at Red
Bank, New Jersey, are American examples of the world-wide in
fluence of Fourier's principles of association. Weitling apparently
was introduced to Fourier's system through the work of Con¬
siderant.
To complete the list, mention must be made of two additional
French reformers, Étienne Cabet and Lamennais. Not only was
Weitling familiar with Cabet's program, but he knew the French
Utopian personally, visited his colony in Illinois, and carried on
a considerable correspondence with him while both were residents
of the United States. Trained as a lawyer, Cabet in 1831 had es
tablished a paper, known as the Populaire. When his radicalism
forced him into exile, he went to England, where he fell under the
spell of Robert Owen and embraced communism. His Voyage
en Icarie, one of the most charming of all Utopian fantasies, ap
peared in Paris in 1840. Weitling read it and referred to it fre
quently and later had an opportunity to watch the attempt of the
Icarians to put their blueprint for happiness into practice on the
American frontier.
Lamennais' Paroles d'un Croyant was another little book that
made a deep impression on the embryo German communist during
these Paris years. Its author was Hugues Félicité Robert de Lamen
nais, a frail little man with piercing, restless eyes, a priest who had
turned socialist. A mild-mannered man, devout and strict in his
daily observance of the Catholic ritual, he nevertheless broke with
both the Papacy and the French monarchy. A champion of po
litical liberalism, he put the red cap of liberty (to use Heine's
phrase) on top of the cross. He issued the first edition of his book
in 1834 and was promptly excommunicated. But Ludwig Borne
translated his work into German, and eventually it went into a
hundred editions. When Lamennais died in 1854, the New York
Tribune pointed out that he had thrown "the halo of religion
around the cause of political freedom and equality," for his real
purpose had been to equate the cause of communism with primi-