Profession of faith of a Fourierist.

The following passage is extracted from a new work entitled: Letters to my brother on my religious beliefs, by Math. Briancourt. n “I believe in one only God, all-powerful, just, and good, having for body the light, for members the totality of the heavenly bodies ordered in hierarchical series. – I believe that God attributes to all his members, great and small, a function to fulfill in the development of the universal life that is his life, reserving intelligence for those members who associate themselves with him in the government of the world. – I believe that the intelligent beings of the last degree, the humanities, have for task the gestation of the heavenly bodies they inhabit and over which they have the mission of making order, peace, and justice reign. – I believe that creatures fulfill their functions by satisfying their needs, which God proportions exactly to the requirements of the functions; and since, in his goodness, he links pleasure to the satisfaction of needs, I believe that every creature, accomplishing its task, is as happy as its nature allows, and that its sufferings are the more vivid the more it departs from the accomplishment of that task. – I believe that terrestrial Humanity will soon have acquired the knowledge and the material that are indispensable to it to fulfill its high function and that, in consequence, the day of general happiness here will not be long in arising. – I believe that the intelligence of rational beings disposes of two bodies: one formed of substances visible to our eyes; the other of more subtle and invisible matters called aromas. – I believe that, with the death of its visible body, these beings continue to live in an aromal world, where they find the exact remuneration of their works good or bad; then, after a more or less long time, they retake a material body to abandon it again to decomposition and so on. – I believe that the intelligences that grow by fulfilling exactly their functions go to animate beings ever more elevated in the divine hierarchy, until they enter, at the end of times, into the bosom of God, whence they came, and unite with his intelligence and share his aromal life.” With such a profession of faith, one understands that the Fourierists and Spiritists can join hands.

[1] 1 vol. in-18. Librairie des sciences sociales. [Lettres à mon frère sur mes croyances religieuses - Google books.]