The Passions of the Human Soul, Vol 1 of 2 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The Passions of the Human Soul

Of injustice in?icted on him at an early age. He was severely rebuked for telling a customer the cost price Of a piece of goods in his father's shop. This indignity in?icted on the love Of truth sank deep into his soul. He could not forget it, but was constantly re?ecting on the meanness which unites untruthfulness with trade. He desired not to be a merchant, but his family connections were unable to procure him a com mission in the army in accordance with his wish. On leaving home to go to Rouen, he passed through Paris, and there again he was struck with what he termed the mys teries Of commerce. On asking the price Of some apples, which were common in his native town, he was surprised to find it what be deemed exorbitantly high; fourpence was asked for an apple sold for a halfpenny per dozen in the country. This ninety-six-fold difference between the Whole sale price Of the fruit where it was gathered, and the retail price where it was sold, struck him as a shameful example of the extortions Of commerce. He was, however, doomed to be a merchant; and in 1793, after the death Of his father, he commenced business with about four thousand pounds in Lyons. In 1796 he was ruined by the civil war in which Lyons resisted the army of the Convention. He was then obliged to join the army as a private soldier. In 1798 he Obtained leave to quit the army, as an invalid. He then en gaged as clerk in a large mercantile house at Marseilles. Here again he was shocked by the customs of commerce. His employers were very extensive importers of grain, and he was employed by them, on one occasion, during a period Of great scarcity and famine, to conduct the Operation Of throw ing a very large quantity of damaged rice into the sea, by night, that the population might not witness this calamitous result. The rice had been spoiled from being kept too long, in order to increase the scarcity and run up prices. These particular occurrences, in the midst of the general turmoil Of that revolutionary period in France, kept Fourier's mind constantly bent upon questions of social, commercial, and political organization and progress. In 1799 he gained an insight into what he deemed a clue to the whole problem.